


Built on Hope

by seaofolives



Series: Baze & Chirrut Spring Collection [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, M/M, POV Baze Malbus, Pre-Movie(s), Sexual Content, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-11-11 04:11:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 71,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11140791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofolives/pseuds/seaofolives
Summary: A Baze x Chirrut-centric Pacific Rim AU, set before thePacific Rimfilm.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ∙ Written initially for safarikalamari@tumblr and rebelkye@tumblr but eventually shared to everyone just in case there might be more interest. I know there's been some PR headcanons going around this late so as a disclaimer of sorts, I didn't read any of them during the preparation for this fic just to avoid any possibilities of plagiarism or whatnot. 
> 
> ∙ I tried to make this a fusion of both movies to the best that I can without deviating too much from the PR canon so expect some changes in the setting and whatnot (although I couldn't avoid some parallelism to the PR movie, sorry). Also some laziness in terms of Pacific Rim-era technology, terms, lore, etc. because I couldn't memorize them all and couldn't keep checking the book and the movie itself. Also I have a ship to sail.
> 
> ∙ Actually, just suspend disbelief and try not to be too critical on like the whole thing (for instance: the characterizations) and there's a chance you might consider this work half-decent if you so choose.

Baze felt a flush of embarrassment warming his cheeks in the frigid Tokyo winter when the lift doors parted and let out three LOCCENT officers who smelled like they’d all come fresh from the mess hall. There was something up with its ventilation again but the expert technician was down with a flu and there really wasn’t anyone else who could figure out what went wrong. Again. He nodded to them when they stopped for a heartbeat to bow back before he hurried into the lift and punched the button for the clinic. 

When the giant doors sealed themselves, he huffed out a sigh of relief, and caught a vague reflection of himself on the shinier part of the metal near the lip. Baze removed his bloody handkerchief from the left side of his face and peered at the damage caused by an errant cable. He’d been trying to loosen a jammed hinge on his jaeger’s boot when his wrench clipped the lubricant feed and sent it whipping to his eye, missing what would have been a permanently unfortunate damage by one lucky inch. He’d tried to work in spite of it but the blood was becoming too much and Kay had to send him away. 

Now he knew why: the severed tip of the culprit had drawn two lines that framed his eye, one up, one down at the side. That was about the only assessment he could manage before the doors parted open and welcomed him to an empty hallway. 

Baze hurried through it, handkerchief back on his face. Twisting pipes that reminded him of the shinkansen trailed along the wall, black and gray on a wall of military green. Overhead were old-fashioned spotlights the size of a plate that managed to work together to cast out the gloom that would have turned the whole place into the final scene of a torture film. The clinic appeared before him not long after. The door was open, the light within burning silver and white. He started to jog. 

Until a scream tore out of the tiny room and changed his plans in one instant. It burst through the open door, terrifying and shaking him, his nerves crawling up his skin in a race to the peak of his shoulders. Hearing someone scream in pain or anger was bad enough. 

Hearing something straight out of his nightmare, and seeing it right in front of his very eyes was something else entirely. He was maybe three more steps away from the entrance when it happened; someone in a standard-issue white medical gown was kicking and thrashing at the head doctor and her nurses surrounding him, orchestrating a mess of falling metal pans and glassware and a chair to boot. There was no sense to what he was crying at first—but Baze stood long enough to hear what it was he was yelling:

_Jed._

A name he knew by heart as much as the howling man did. Arms tried again and again to keep his upright form steady on his bed while a big man with a generous waistline prepared a syringe well outside the circle. _Wait!_ Baze wanted to say as he took a step forward—but this was not really a fight that was his to join. 

The man tried to shove his wardens away but he couldn’t land a sure blow and soon, four pairs of hands were around each of his wrists while the head doctor pleaded sharply for him to calm down, saying, “Shikkari shinasai, Imwe-san!”

“Dame! Iya! Bat jiu!!” _No,_ in every way he knew how to say. He was wild-eyed but could not direct his anger on any one face. “ _Jed!!_ ”

Once more, and so soon after the incident, Baze felt helpless again. Blood trickled from his cut, down to his cheek, taking the path of his old tears which was probably why he’d forgotten to wipe it. Two men finally got ahold of those kicking feet and then the big man moved in, jamming the syringe straight into an arm and squeezing the plunger. He screamed. 

_I’m sorry, Chirrut,_ Baze thought suddenly even when he knew there was no reason for it, but it felt colder not to try. Outside the door, Baze watched Chirrut’s manic strength start to flag when the needle was pulled out, until the hands of his captors were carrying him back carefully to his bed. He still whispered the name _Jed_ over and over as he lied back down his pillow, but his dark eyes were falling shut. 

Baze waited until Chirrut had returned to sleep and the nurses had all gathered around in a circle to whisper in Japanese before he turned to leave.

⚠

A week had passed since he’d last watched Jed Malbus cross the bridge to his Conn-Pod.

He’d caught him just as he was about to pass through the gate, and he might have missed him if he hadn’t barked for his attention with an echoing, “Jed!” Both men in their bright red battle armors, their helmets between their arms and sides, turned as one, in perfect synchronicity. Baze felt like flushing when Chirrut caught his eyes. 

“Go on in, I’ll catch up,” Jed told Chirrut with a nod. 

“You had better,” Chirrut warned him, raising a brow. Jed chuckled deeply. He turned to look at Baze, smiled, and waved. 

Baze smiled back—or put on a likeness of one—and waved back to the ranger stepping into his Conn-Pod. 

Jed met him at the mouth of the bridge. Without his suit, they would have stood perfectly level with each other but for now, Baze had to look up to his own reflection. “Good luck out there, brother,” he said. 

“Is that all my little brother has to say to me after you came all this way?” Jed asked, popping his own brow in much the same way Chirrut had. 

Baze snorted. “By two minutes,” he reminded his twin. Jed smirked. At a loss, he nodded back to the gaping door again. “Take care of my baby.”

“You mean Chirrut Imwe?”

“No,” Baze groaned and this time, Jed laughed filling the whole corridor with it. Baze hoped he wasn’t blushing to his ears again. “He’s going to find this in the Drift, isn’t he?”

“He’s my co-pilot, what do you expect?”

“Just take care of yourselves out there,” Baze insisted. He took a step back, waving a finger at the direction of the Conn-Pod. “That’s a brand spanking new I-20 Plasma Cannon strapped to Ruby’s shoulder. She’s the only Mark II to get one. You take good care of it.”

“You’re one hell of a brother, Baze.”

Baze shrugged—but he was smiling. 

They both were. 

Stepping forward, Jed raised his heavy arms and engulfed his twin in them. Baze squeezed back. “We’ll come back.”

“I know.” Baze clapped him on his shoulder plate as they stepped apart. “You always do.”

Jed waved to him as he marched back to the waiting door, and Baze walked the other way. 

By the time he’d stepped into the dimness of the LOCCENT, the room had become a beast of its own, churning in the wake of the roused jaeger, rising beyond their wall of windows like a polished crimson god. Lights flashed and blinked along its plating, a circus of white and red that resembled the glimmer of a precious gemstone as it raised first its right fist and then its left. A wonder of science, unity and ingenuity that never failed to take Baze’s breath away no matter how long he had, and had been, working on the giant. All of humanity’s progress and discovery had amounted to this: a golem with three narrow windows on its face like claw marks, its armor sharpened at an angle where a humanoid’s bones might bend. On its breast was a white circle torn in two by a red lightning strike. 

“Proofed and transmitting,” someone up ahead announced to the whole room which by and large ignored his helpful advice. “Neural handshake steady and holding.”

“Ruby Force,” the marshal stepped forward next to the first man who occupied himself with the million and one things left on his to-do list, “your orders are to hold the Miracle Mile until enforcements from Shanghai arrive, and then to provide them firepower support. Do not engage the kaiju directly unless it becomes absolutely necessary. Until then, stay near the coastline.”

“ _Copy that._ ” Jed responding to the marshal. 

“ _As long as we get to play with this new I-20._ ” Chirrut. 

Baze groaned and rolled his eyes. He crossed his thick arms across his chest, glaring at his twin’s stats and brain image on the screen. 

“ _Ruby Force_ ,” his brother again, “ _deploying in three…two…_ ”

_One,_ Baze counted for himself and squeezed his eyes shut. 

The blare of the jaeger’s warning horn came right on time as the massive life form stirred from the LOCCENT and trudged into the Pacific Ocean west of the island. Chirrut always loved to give the “mating call” as he liked to call it, and Baze can imagine him laughing in the Conn-Pod as he and his twin marched off in unison, arms and legs moving with the jaeger’s. 

“Sometimes, I dream about replacing Ruby’s horn with a _real_ mating call,” the first man shared when Baze came up to him. He dropped back to his seat in a slouch, arms folded around his front. “Like maybe a duck’s. But then I realized that Chirrut would still have to give the warning horn and he’d get a crack out of it besides and I don’t really want to get on Jed’s bad side. So I don’t replace the warning horn. Until Chirrut pulls off that shit again and then I’ll dream about replacing Ruby’s horn with a real mating call again.”

“You do realize, Kay, that it would give us more problems if Ruby would have to fend off both kaiju _and_ ducks.”

“If animals are as smart as scientists say they are, they’ll know to keep away from a jaeger _and_ a kaiju having it out in the middle of the ocean.” Kay whirled in his seat, looking up to Baze with his usual sleepy-eyed mien. “So, what can I do for you?”

Baze nodded to the window looking out to the ocean where the Mark II was making headway, blocking out the setting sun. “How bad is it?”

“It’s a Category IV, codename Humper, not Thumper.” Kay swiveled back to the myriad of screens surrounding him. “Moving at a faster rate than my Internet connection, headed towards us.”

“So that’s why we’re doubling it up.”

“It’s a sound plan,” Kay commented. “Just as long as Shanghai gets to us before Humper does.”

“ _LOCCENT, we’ve reached the coastline,_ ” Jed came in. “ _We’re seeing the bogey in our scans but no sign of Shanghai. Do we engage?_ ”

Kay practically yanked the mike towards him to respond. “Negative, negative, hold your position!” 

“ _LOCCENT, if we don’t engage now, it might be too late,_ ” Chirrut protested. “ _The kaiju is coming faster, we’re losing advantage by staying put!_ ”

“Chirrut, the Miracle Mile is our last line of defense, you _cannot_ leave that unprotected!”

“ _Never mind that, it’s coming right for us._ ” Jed. “ _Engaging now!_ ” 

“ _Brace for impact!_ ”

Chirrut’s words had almost gotten lost under the collective awe of the LOCCENT as a dark gash pierced the water and struck the air. There was no other way that Baze can put it than an angry black comma whirling against the heavy skies, a trail of rain in its wake. Ruby had just gotten her arms up over her chest in the nick of time before the finned tail smashed against her steel with the weight of the ocean. She rocked back, bearing the brunt of the impact on her shoulders. 

At that moment, the entire LOCCENT got on its feet and surged forward, to all the relevant scanners and windows looking over the fight. The kaiju disappeared back under the water with a giant splash but was up and upon the red jaeger before she could pull back to recover. Clawed hands lashed out and latched onto her still-crossed forearms, holding them in place. Baze felt his stomach drop. 

“Where the hell is Shanghai?!”

“Ruby, hold your ground!” The marshal. 

The entire room heaved with a nauseating hysteria. Outside, the kaiju shrieked a challenge at the trapped jaeger, gloating at its triumph. Baze stared, oblivious to it all as he ran through a hundred and one sequences that could get Ruby out of her predicament. As if he were a part of the Drift and Jed and Chirrut could pick his ideas up straight from his brain. 

And maybe they had—in a manner of speaking. Baze couldn’t call him and Jed Drift Compatible, partly out of respect for Chirrut, but they _were_ twins, having lived most of their lives with absolute awareness of the other’s existence. One didn’t need to be Drift Compatible to know how the other thought, so it didn’t surprise Baze when the jaeger pushed forward and jumped, as though it were attempting to dislodge the kaiju like in a schoolyard brawl. It was a move that was bound to end in failure. 

Unless they added the rear jet into the mix, and that brought the combined weight and force of the jaeger over the kaiju’s capacity, overwhelming it. Baze didn’t catch himself crying, “Yes!!” That was Jed, that was all Jed, he knew. He’d seen that move before, in some iteration or other. 

The upper cut that followed, slicing past the kaiju’s flailing arms was all Chirrut—somehow, that man always resembled an arrow no matter if he was beating up someone on bare feet in the Kwoon or suited up in a whopping jaeger. They felt and heard the impact of metal on hide across the ocean and cheered when the kaiju staggered. 

Ruby shifted back for space—Baze tensed—and sent out a call to the LOCCENT. 

“ _LOCCENT, if Shanghai doesn’t get here in t-minus 5, we’re not saving them a piece of the kill._ ”

“Chirrut,” Kay was scrabbling over his controls and somehow sending out sensible commands in spite of it, “Shanghai just deployed, ETA t-minus 10.”

“ _Not soon enough,_ ” Chirrut said as Baze clenched his fist and shouted to him, _Now!_

His thoughts rippled out to the crimson jaeger. She crossed her arms at the front again but released them soon enough with a wild swing to each her sides, sending a net of spokes breaking out of her shell like an animal. Baze was the only one who cheered this time—he’d been particularly proud of that addition in the arsenal and he always loved seeing it come into play. 

“ _We got this, Chirrut,_ ” Jed said; they must have left the mic open. The kaiju had just shaken off the shock from Ruby’s fist by the time they’d set themselves on parted feet, their fists out. The kaiju’s roar rang doubly clearer in the LOCCENT when the Conn-Pod picked it up and then it was half-running, half-swimming towards the polished giant, batting its tail madly. It was shaped like a mangled humpback whale with serrated spikes along its spine, a long tail and a pair of arms and legs. 

Punches and counter-punches flew one way to the other, Baze’s spokes driving foot-deep lacerations into the monster’s thick hide but they weren’t slowing it down. Again and again, the kaiju flung an angry hand or a tail at them, screaming again and again like a bitter spouse. 

“ _Goddammit, who broke up with this anyway?!_ ” Chirrut echoed his thoughts. 

“ _Left arm reduced to 50% capacity!_ ” Count on Jed to carry on professionally in spite of the beating he was getting. 

“Ruby, t-minus 5!” Kay said. 

“ _Now we’re talking,_ ” Chirrut snarled. “ _Jed, now!_ ”

“ _I’m on it, I’m on it!_ ”

“ _Plasma cannon engaged,_ ” said the OS over the mic. 

Baze felt his stomach flipping over like a fish out of water as the new I-20 gathered itself among the jaeger’s left shoulder and cast a glowing threat towards the thrashing kaiju, grappling with the jaeger in an evenly-matched wrestle. The monster argued with it with a scream of its own. 

“ _Now!_ ”

Jed had barely gotten the word out before the kaiju responded with a thick cord shooting out of its open mouth and twisting around the cannon’s muzzle. It took Baze one whole second to realize that what he was looking at was the kaiju’s tongue. 

It took him one more painful second to realize why the kaiju was shaped that way—because it was designed by the devil to take a beating. 

The elastic tongue yanked the cannon off its trajectory, redirecting its aim to the part between Ruby’s right leg and its prodigious belly where it exploded with terribly bad timing. The kaiju let out a shriek of pain but there were two other people joining it in a chorus: Jed Malbus and Chirrut Imwe. 

And it was clear who was faring better than the both of them—Ruby sagged on its side, leaving no guard for the kaiju to contend with when it grabbed for the Conn-Pod and started to squeeze. 

“Ruby, the Conn-Pod is compromised!” Kay yelled. 

Ruby raised her arms between the kaiju’s and smashed them sideways to break the vice-like grip. When that didn’t work, she smashed both her spiked knuckles to the flesh just under the kaiju’s jaw and was rewarded with a shriek and some degree of freedom.

“ _Hull sustained damage,_ ” Jed reported. “ _LOCCENT, we need backup now!_ ”

“ _Re-engaging plasma cannon._ ”

“Chirrut, don’t do it!” Baze screamed to the mic but by then, it was too late. 

The plasma cannon lit up and burst in quick successions, the rangers taking advantage of the kaiju’s work. Each blow merited a cry from the hulking lifeform but the jaeger was stumbling back without the grace it had entered the fight with. Humper’s belly tore open with frayed edges and glops of blue leaking to the water—but by and large, it was still standing. 

Which was much more than Baze could say about the Mark II. He could see where the second blasts had hit her and could tell that she would suffer for it not long soon: fuel loss, lubricant loss, torn hinges, others exposed. Chirrut had always been an unorthodox fighter, but the risk they took just to get to the kaiju had simply been too great. 

They swung one fist and then the next up the kaiju’s thick chin, slashing with the spokes until there was something passable for a smile-shaped cut under the wide jaw. Ruby went for the kill, reaching for the flesh wound to rip it open. Humper shrieked, spewing blood and swung its tail. 

It smashed up the side of the jaeger’s head, overwhelming the rangers, setting off a new series of sirens within the LOCCENT. They managed to dodge the sweeping claw just in time to keep the Conn-Pod connected to the rest of the jaeger but didn’t stop to recover. Baze heard Jed over the microphone break up the jaeger’s armor plates to send forth an army of smaller homing missiles bursting on the kaiju’s hide. 

That was the time that Baze allowed himself to hope again. Humper was shrieking, leaking blue from every puncture, every gash that Ruby Force had inflicted. She charged before the smoke could clear and drove another mean strike upwards the kaiju’s front, a spray of blue erupting from the contact. That left the monster’s front wide open for a racing right hook. 

It came to an abrupt end between the diving jaws of the kaiju, and then Chirrut was screaming as the arm came off in splinters of silver spilling from its frame. Ruby overbalanced sideways, meeting the flat of the kaiju’s tail and staggered the other way. 

If anyone had tried to ask Baze what was happening at that moment, he would not have been able to answer. The LOCCENT was alive with warnings and flashing colors, voices rising first from one end and then the other. Time slowed for the helpless man who could only watch the kaiju dive under the water and resurface behind the battered jaeger to trap her by her shoulders and lunge at the right side of the cranium. 

“Jed, do not disengage, _Jed!!_ ”

Humper’s jaw snapped shut, the metal giving under its powerful bite. Someone was howling over the radio, Kay was sending the choppers out. Baze felt a bitter emptiness gaping in his core. That side had been Chirrut’s side.

_Had been._ But then the kaiju had come and killed him. _Killed._

With Chirrut gone, Ruby tilted to her left side like the broken marionette that she was, her entire weight carried only by one man. His twin, Jed Malbus. 

A jaeger finally came splashing down the water—but it was not the reinforcement they were expecting. Humper turned, finding its new opponent. It shrieked a challenge and jumped into the water, clearing Jed off for a rescue and hopefully, maybe Chirrut, too. _Maybe._ There was nothing that could be said until they’d seen his corpse but Baze didn’t know what to hope for anymore. That Chirrut was still alive, though damaged? That they would at least find a body to burn?

No one had expected Ruby to lunge after the kaiju’s tail when its head crested the wild waves. A cry tore past the monster’s ruined neck when it whirled to bat at the returning jaeger but Jed only clung stubbornly to its thrashing appendage. That was when Baze realized…that he was no longer looking at Jed all along. 

“ _The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force,_ ” Chirrut snarled over the radio as the distended plasma cannon flashed again. “ _And I fear nothing, for all…is as the Force—_ ”

“ _Plasma cannon engaged._ ”

“ _—wills it!_ ”

“No, Chirrut, no, don’t do it!!” Baze yelled over the mic but if Chirrut heard him, he’d made a pointed decision to disobey. 

The jaeger punched the charging cannon upwards with its only fist, redirecting the blast to the screaming kaiju’s mouth. The next one finally malfunctioned and ripped a hole into the jaeger’s shoulder but by then, there was no longer any need for it. Ruby fell back—and so did the kaiju. 

The world swirled around Baze, high pitched beeping noises with every slow heartbeat as he watched his jaeger— _his jaeger_ —sink into the water, taking everything that he cared for with her. Bodies bumped against him again and again and still, he stared.

He would not have noticed that Kay had been trying to call his attention until the man himself had forced his head to face him, hands on his cheeks. Baze stared at the white face, confusion set on his. 

“I’m sorry,” Kay said, his voice echoing. “I’m sorry, Baze, Jed, he…” He shook his head. That was all. 

In the end, he learned that Jed Malbus had sacrificed his life to save Chirrut’s, yanking him from the motion rig system before he was crushed along with the right hemisphere of Ruby Force. As a result of snapping wires and the ruined neural bridge, Chirrut had become permanently blind. As for Shanghai, they’d had trouble deploying their own jaeger, owing to a recent kaiju battle that left their best bet in great need of hasty repairs. Hong Kong had been the one who responded and finished the job, but by then, it had been too late. Baze had lost his twin. He was alone in the world now. 

Chirrut left the active service shortly after he recovered. Baze was seconded to another jaeger team but no longer dabbled with any weapons. 

Three years later, the Tokyo Shatterdome was decommissioned.


	2. Chapter 2

Baze was not Japanese by birth or by citizenship. He was born in Sichuan, at a time when kaiju were nothing more than figments of their imaginations, and later moved to Shanghai with his brother, then to Kodiak Island at Alaska and then finally to Tokyo when he was assigned to the Tokyo Shatterdome. Ever since then, he’d never left Japan and even after the Shatterdome was shut down, he lingered in the city. For Christmas, he’d thought about heading up north to Hokkaido and staying at a hot spring resort just because he could and it was something that people around him did. 

That all changed when he received an invitation to dinner over at a nearby izakaya from an old friend. It had been a year and a half since they’d both seen each other but that fact gave Baze no reason to come running with his arms wide open. It had been a long time since he was in such spirits. 

Although they had once been superior and subordinate, he didn't bother coming in a “cleaner” fashion outside of his usual ragged jacket, a black band shirt, a pair of well-worn, well-loved jeans and all-terrain shoes and his long hair bound up to a knot at the top of his head. He spotted him easily as he came through the door, much like spotting a tourist out of the crowd. A blond head in a sea of black, the only one sitting in a leisurely manner when everyone else was otherwise hunched over cups and plates, throwing down one shot after another, bowed by overwork. 

Those perpetually sleepy eyes looked up from what looked like a folded broadsheet just in time as Baze cleared half the distance with heavy, quiet feet. He raised his hand in greeting needlessly, then got up from the four-seater next to the wall and opened his arms out wide. “Baze, my main man!”

“It’s been a long time, Kay,” Baze responded with his own half of the embrace, unable to keep a small smile from the reunion even when it looked like he only reserved it for certain individuals that fit a narrow margin. He’d almost forgotten that Kay was one of the few people who could beat him in a game of heights. “What’s brought you back?” he asked amiably. 

“Y’know, this and that.” Kay stepped back. “Hey, so you did eventually grow out your hair, didn’t you?”

Baze shrugged, taking the seat opposite of his old friend. “How are the wife and the kid?”

“Kids. There’s two now, and three if the world doesn’t end in six months.” Kay smiled, nodding. “It was good while it lasted. You heard about Lima, I’m sure.”

Baze nodded. He knew it because it had closed its doors permanently on the same day Tokyo had, Japan time. At that moment, he finally took note of the parca coat draped over a moderate bulk with straps resembling the arms of a backpack beside Kay, where another person might have sat. Kay himself, placed near the outside of the table, was dressed in a comfortable black cardigan top that covered him from neck to wrist. He’d just come from the airport. 

“So,” he began, indicating the pile with a flick of his finger. “You retiring, then?” Vacation was the only motive he could think of for Kay to be coming back to a country that had nothing left for him, anyway. No job, no friends, no house waiting to welcome him back. It had been a year since he’d had any of those and his last chance had expired three months ago. 

Kay hadn’t said anything when he’d reached out to Baze with a short e-mail late last night and hadn’t bothered to answer his question about his purpose of visit on his reply. Kay instead explained that he was on a rental phone and could only give the time and location of their dinner. His arrival had come at such short notice, there hadn’t been much time for Baze to do more than to accept the invitation, although he’d had plenty of time to wonder and imagine. And he didn’t like what he came up with. 

“I wish,” Kay said instead, rolling his eyes. “I’ll tell you all about it but hang on, I need to order for us first.” Raising a hand, he beckoned to the counter with a request and all the confidence of a local. “Onegaishimasu!”

The food came in short order: appetizers in tiny plates, bowls of stew, rice, a platter of sashimi that Kay was bound to polish clean, another one of yakitori that Baze was happy to take care of. They’d ordered warm sake to go with their dinner and toasted to the future before they dug in. 

“I remember the minute I arrived at Lima, I went to a Japanese restaurant and ordered sashimi and tofu,” Kay shared as he dipped his piece in soy sauce and popped it in his mouth. “Tasted like piss and old socks. That was the time I learned the real meaning of regret. I never went to a Japanese restaurant ever since.” He sipped from his bowl of stew and reached for the sake flask. “Until now.”

“So that’s why you’re back here in Tokyo,” Baze said, holding out his cup to be filled. “I can almost believe it.”

“Believe!” Kay repeated, amused. He reached for a piece of karaage, raising his bowl of rice, while Baze welcomed himself to a slice of salmon. “That’s a funny word to use, Baze.”

Baze washed down the fish with a sip from his cup before he directed his full attention to Kay demolishing his food. “What’s the joke if it’s so funny?” he asked without humor. 

“The world’s coming to an end, that’s what,” Kay replied smoothly, dragging his chopsticks through his lips to set it down. Drowsy blue eyes connected with dark ones that betrayed nothing but a lack of amusement. “You’ve been busy, Baze?”

“Busy surviving.”

“How?”

Baze shrugged, even when the question sounded like a challenge. “This and that,” he repeated after Kay. “I can fit in anywhere that needs a screw and a wrench.”

“I bet you can,” Kay said, nodding. “It’s why I came here. I’ve got a place in mind that needs a few screws tightened here and there.”

“Where’s that?”

“The Pan-Pacific Defense Corp.” The words had rolled out of Kay’s tongue so smoothly, he might have spoken something of a universal truth.

And characteristic of one, it took Baze aback. His stoicism broke and disintegrated. From his place in the dinner table, he stared, slightly agape, at the deadpan face across him. He was serious. “The PPDC’s dead,” he mumbled carelessly. 

“Not dead,” Kay corrected him. “Dying. We’ve still got some fight left in us.”

“They’ve decommissioned the Shatterdomes.”

“No shit. You haven’t heard?”

Baze glared at Kay across the table. Kay knocked back his cup and refilled it again, all without batting an eyelash. 

He looked up to him and they stared again. After a second, Kay continued, “They’ve decommissioned all Shatterdomes—but one. Hong Kong’s still open for business.”

“And that’s all the PPDC has to show for themselves.”

“In the words of the great Marshal Pentecost himself, we’re something of a resistance now.”

“Stacker Pentecost?” Now Baze sounded impressed. His brows rose in effect. It didn’t take a ranger to know who Stacker Pentecost was—a former ranger who’d finished a Category II all on his own before he rose to the ranks of marshal and pretty much manhandled the entire PPDC into what it was now. Dead or dying though it was. “You spoke with him?”

“Someone who spoke to him spoke to me,” Kay shared, barely pausing to chew on a bit of gari. “I need you back in the payroll, Baze.”

“I don’t have a jaeger.”

“I’ve got one waiting just for you,” Kay said. “A Mark III, seven drops, seven kills. I wouldn’t entrust her with just about anybody.”

That put Baze on his guard. He inched back, eyebrows frowning. He thought Kay might have wanted to please him by saying it but he had achieved an entirely different effect on trying. But this was Kay, a man who had been entrusted with the entire Tokyo J-Tech Division and the LOCCENT mission control at that. He’d known the man since his first year as a Weapons Specialist and if there was anything he knew about him aside from his gallows humor and rich sarcasm, it was that he was a very. Serious. Man. 

“Last hope for humanity?” Baze tried—and he’d guessed right. 

“The only Mark III in complete working order as I speak,” Kay continued. “She’s old but she gets the job done.”

“And you want a Mark II technician to look after her?” Baze shook his head. “What happened to her team? Don’t you think she’s much better off in the hands of younger folks with some new tricks up their sleeves?”

“I think she’s much better off with someone who knows how to take her seriously,” Kay said. “She’s a Mark III, she’s nuclear. Same as Ruby, same as all the other jaegers you’ve taken care of. All the kids know and want to do are Mark IVs and Vs.” Then with a shake of his head, he asked, “What’s wrong, Baze? There’s something you’re not telling me here.And I don’t think it’s because of friends or family or a job. You don’t have any, not after what happened three years ago.” Harsh, but Kay had been there the whole time he grieved. 

Baze hadn’t even considered that last angle but after Kay had shot it down, he regretted not being faster. It _wasn’t_ a job, though—on that, Kay was right. These days, there was no one who paid more than the PPDC, besides. 

Still not an attractive prospect—otherwise, he would have jumped at the opportunity Kay had crossed half the world to lay on his lap for. Baze forced himself to relax, breathing as he pressed his back to his seat. With a shrug that was pointedly nonchalant, he said, “The world’s coming to an end, that’s what. Before that happens, I’ve a mind to try my hand on other things outside my old life.”

“Like what?” Kay shrugged back. “Poetry, painting?”

“Why the hell not?”

“‘cause you’re still here in Japan,” Kay answered. “Hell, you haven’t even stepped out of Tokyo yet, even when there’s nothing left for you here.”

“My severance package isn’t as big as yours.”

“A man of your talent could have easily solved that problem if he wanted to.” Kay shifted forward to rest his elbows on the edge of the table. “Let me ask you one thing, Baze: why don’t I see you climbing up and down the Wall of Life, Baze? They could use someone like you up there.”

They could, he believed this to be true—but that didn’t mean that they deserved Baze. At all. They were an anti-kaiju defense mechanism but to him, they were also anti-jaeger, anti-everything he stood up for. If it weren’t for them, the Shatterdomes would still be open today, and he hated them for what they’d done to the program. What _little_ they’ve done for the world. His brother’s ghost would never forgive him if he ever stepped anywhere near them, and he knew Kay knew this. 

So he glared at him, for even making that suggestion. Baze was a big man, and his glower was not something anyone was in the habit of taking lightly. 

Unless of course, you were Kay. And the glower seemed to be exactly what you were looking for. With a satisfied nod, Kay leaned back to his seat. “Thought so,” he said, smug. 

The bastard had played him. He hadn’t needed to force his secret out to know what it was. And for that, Baze shifted his glare from his meaning to the man himself. 

For what it was worth, Kay raised his cup to him, and knocked it back in one smooth toss.

⚠

“There’s a chopper headed for Kaohsiung, Taiwan at Haneda Airport, leaving at 0500H. I’ll be on that flight along with a couple others.

“Don’t be a stranger now.”

In spite of their varying opinions on Baze’s choice of employment, they parted amiably, as friends would. 

The rain had come just as Baze had left the station. By the time he’d made it home, it was crashing and the skies were booming and flashing overhead. 

He walked around the darkened apartment on bare feet, two empty bowls in one hand, some old phonebooks in the other, navigating the shadows with all the confidence of a man who’d been doing this for half his life. Someone from TEPCO was on the radio in his bedroom, assuring Tokyo that they were doing all that they could to restore power in the city ASAP. 

One of the phonebooks landed on a humble puddle somewhere between his living room and his kitchen, becoming a bed for one of the bowls he carried. The tap of leaking water took on a ringing quality, like a chime, as a result. 

He left the other pair near the side of his door before he stepped back into the warm circle of light filling his cramped room, its origin a solar lamp sitting on his cluttered desk. His hand-sized radio stood next to it, surrounded by cut up, twisted pieces of aluminum cans forced out of their original round countenances into something that resembled arms and legs, among many others. Whatever else a figurine might need to be self-sufficient and unique among its peers. Baze had hoped to finish this particular project before he left for Hokkaido but Kay had seen to the opposite of that. 

Now he fell to his seat and dropped back to look up to his shelves nailed to the wall. At the aluminum figurines, these ones as tall as his hand and painted, that made up his personal jaeger army. He’d arranged them all by their marks and could tell their names with half a glance. Tacit Ronin, Eden Assassin, Shaolin Rogue just there, right below it. The last of the Mark IIIs, Matador Fury, was still in scraps on his worktable. He would put it up there, next to a picture of him and his brother enjoying their last night at Kodiak Island before they were deployed to Tokyo. 

One among many that surrounded him, happy faces, smiling faces looking over his bed, his books, his obsessions, everything. Pictures of him and his brother as young boys, young men who lived in a world without kaiju, men who did their part in protecting humanity from the scourge. That was them just arrived at Tokyo, dressed in matching PPDC grays, them standing in the middle of Alaskan winter. 

Them in the Kwoon, their legs stretched out across the mat and kneeling up for a beam and a peace sign, Chirrut Imwe before he stepped inside Ruby Force. 

Baze had surrounded himself with pictures of friends and family, drawings, jaegers, newspaper clippings, tech magazine cutouts but here and there were pockets where Chirrut Imwe waved and beamed. He hadn’t even taken them all; he received them in a slender bundle the morning Chirrut left Tokyo. No note, just three knocks and pictures strapped together in a rubber band. Chirrut hadn’t even handed them personally, he’d asked one of Ruby’s technicians to do it. He’d never seen or heard from him since. 

If Kay wanted to know why Baze stayed in Tokyo in spite of all it took from him, he need only to step inside his private quarters. If Kay wanted to know why he couldn’t go, this was it. This was Baze’s Wall of Life, something he’d put together on the fly after he moved in following the Shatterdome’s end and thought he was done with bare walls. Kay wanted him back but he couldn’t imagine a Shatterdome without any of his memories. They were the only reason why he stayed in the Tokyo Shatterdome even after his twin, Chirrut and Ruby had gone—because the place was the last thing that connected him to them. Without any of it, there was no sense in even trying. It wouldn’t even be a favor. He couldn’t imagine it, how wrong it all is. 

He rose and brought himself to his single bed hidden by the open door, reaching for one of the photos he’d taped right next to his pillow. It was supposed to be a solo of him taken from a high angle, smiling with Ruby Force at the back. Until Chirrut Imwe snuck up from behind, poked his cheeks with two peace signs and grinned for the camera. Baze remembered looking bewildered at the ranger who escaped his wrath in a series of stumbling feet echoing down the catwalk, cackling. 

There was never going to be a revenge, of course. Now Baze smiled at the picture, leaning back on his pillow to gaze at it. No one would know how much of a favorite of his it was—he hadn’t told anyone. 

He dropped his hand to his lap, looked around his room and sighed. Thunder rumbled from a distance, and then with a click, clear light from overhead flooded and filled his room. He could hear the crowd cheering from the TV he’d left on in the living room. The news was on the recent J.League victory again. 

He’d never watched any of their games, even in the past. He never quite got the hang of them.

⚠

He thought he could hear the chopper’s blades beating in the cold wind, and that set him off in a panic, nearly smashing into a man in a officer’s suit who would have surely gone down with at least one injury at the combination of his bulk and his duffel bag’s.

So imagine his surprise—and his relief—to catch the Bell on its helipad completely stationary in spite of the action that surrounded it. It reminded him strangely of an antsy dragonfly, one heartbeat away from taking off, away from all the crates and the packs that surrounded it like predators. One side of it was wide thrown wide open. He caught a leg sticking out. 

“Kay!” he barked over the distance and hurried over. 

Kay straightened up and looked at him past the open door before he replied with his own surprise. “Baze,” he said. He left the chopper on its own while he approached the jogging man, stuffing his hands in his thick parca, eyes squinted against the wind. 

Baze stopped a span apart from him to catch his breath. He turned briefly to the vehicle, and asked, “‘sit too late?”

Kay started with a hiss, and a frown that looked like it was painted on by regret, like a wince. He glanced over his shoulder, the wind dragging at him like scorned lovers, before he faced Baze and told him, “See, I thought you wouldn’t change your mind so I went and gave your spot to this yellowfin tuna I won from the auction.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Three-hundred fifty pounds of delicious, Baze.” Kay shook his head. “I really don’t wanna have to choose.”

Baze was nodding in understanding. He glanced at the motionless chopper again, like a man in search of this underwater miracle. With a gesture to it, he asked, “That the PPDC’s newest grand plan, then? Fishing?”

“Let’s call it a study,” Kay said. “Unless you’ve got better ideas, I might be convinced to choose.”

“I do,” Baze said, squinting back at Kay. “She’s a Mark III, a bit old but she gets the job done.” But by then, Kay was no longer listening. 

He was laughing, and smiling like a millionaire as he raised his arms and brought Baze in for an embrace. “I knew it, I knew you’d come around!”

“You knew my brother,” Baze reminded him as he clapped him back. 

“I knew you both,” Kay said, agreeing. “What changed your mind, man?”

Baze remembered the bedroom that used to be his, the faces that looked down on him, the memories he’d tried to fill the gap with. He could never find them in the new Shatterdome anymore but he couldn’t just let them die in his head. It would be a disgrace to them, and the lives that once were. In the end, he swung the duffel bag off his meaty shoulder and opened one of its front pockets to pull out a red doll in a clear sandwich bag, shaped from aluminum cans into a jaeger with three clawed lines on its face.

Kay nodded in full comprehension. He’d appreciated it—he told Baze as much by clapping his arm. “It’s good to have you back,” was all he said. Baze smiled a little. With a sweep of his hand to the waiting Bell, he told him, “Get your stuff in there, we’re leaving soon.”

Baze took that as his first command from his returning superior and did as he was told. In an instant, everything felt familiar: the urgency to comply, the purpose driving his bones, knowing that the fate of humanity may very well rest on his own shoulders. He moved easily past the waiting provisions circling the chopper and made his way to the backseat. Kay’s stuff was already there, leaving the front row wide open for the pilot and one more passenger he hadn’t yet met. “Who’re we waiting for?” he asked, throwing his bag beside Kay’s pack just as someone behind him introduced his presence with a sharp, “Kay!”

“Here come the honeymooners,” Kay muttered when Baze turned to seek out the voice. Two more people, themselves laden with packs, had arrived to the helipad and were making their way across the concrete. The one who’d called was a dark-haired mustachioed man, dressed simply in a light shirt, a pair of multi-pocketed pants and a complicated looking jacket with a trimming of fur along the hood. Baze saw that he was lithe, though, moving steadily and easily in spite of the bulk over his shoulder. The woman beside him, his brunette companion, matched him evenly, pace by pace, with an impression that looked like she was well-acquainted with introducing faces to her fist or her boot, whichever was available. Just looking at the angle of their shoulders and the weight of their gait was all Baze needed to know what this pair was. 

Kay raised his hand and gestured for Baze to follow him. “Had a good time?” he asked the new arrivals.

“No kaiju,” the mustachioed man grumbled, meeting them halfway across the gray field. “That’s saying something.” Grumpy, _grouchy_ for a man so young. There was something about his accent that sounded…temporary, like Baze could snap it in two if he ever caught a hold of it, and that was the only way he could describe it. 

“Sometimes, God’s awake,” was the only explanation Kay offered for the miracle before he extended a hand first to one then the other, leaning towards Baze. “These are Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso. They’ll be coming with us for Rebel Hope.”

“Rebel Hope, I’ve heard of her,” Baze said clasping hands with each ranger. “Seven drops, seven kills.”

“Jyn Erso’s the daughter of J-Tech expert Galen Erso, but he’ll be working in Hong Kong,” Kay continued. “Cassian, Jyn, this one’s Baze Malbus, he’ll be working on your jaeger.”

“How do you do,” Jyn greeted him easily. British. 

“Malbus,” Cassian repeated, looking up at the taller man under furrowed brows, shifting his weight from one leg to the next. “You’re Jed Malbus’ twin.”

It was strange hearing that name from someone again. It had been at least a year since but Baze commended himself for staying on his feet in spite of the surprise. With half a shrug, he told Cassian that he was. 

“Oh I’m…” Cassian offered his own fuller shrug, “sorry about what happened.”

“It was all over the Jaeger Academy, back in our day,” Jyn slipped in smoothly, barely giving Cassian’s words time to breathe. “Scared half the trainees home.”

“Which was good for us,” Cassian chased after his co-pilot. “You know, like a blessing in disguise.”

One reminded him of an old man, the other struck him as casually arrogant. Together, Baze thought they must be quite an intimidating team to meet in the field. He couldn’t figure out how they fit into each other’s puzzle but that was the Drift for you. If they had seven kills between themselves, then their handshake must be impressively solid. 

“We’ll play get-to-know-you on board, it’s time we leave,” Kay hurried them and the rangers stepped around the mission controller and the technician without another word wasted. “Commander Mothma’s expecting us in Taiwan at t-minus 3 hours.”

“Commander?” Baze echoed Kay, marching with him to the backseat while Rebel Hope’s rangers strapped themselves in. “Why the layover?”

“I’ll tell you all about it on the way over,” Kay said, hopping onto the passenger’s seat at the front. “Now get in, we’re going fishing.”

⚠

They were not going to Hong Kong.

This was the first thing Kay had cleared up when the chopper took off. “See, the marshal’s still setting up shop down in Hong Kong which kind of puts them at a disadvantage when our ugly friends come knocking,” Kay began to explain. “So that’s where we come in—we’re the bad boys who’ll keep the dogs out until the master comes whistling. Then we pack up and move to Hong Kong.”

“How many jaegers have we got?” Baze asked. 

“Two,” Kay answered. Then he looked at Cassian between Baze and Jyn, the man eyeing him under frowning brows. “ _Technically_ , it’s two.”

“What do you mean _technically_?”

“He means Rogue Alpha,” Jyn answered for Kay, drawing Baze’s attention to her end of the backseat. Everything about her sounded and felt impressively unimpressed with all the developments so far. “She’s not yet fully operational, she’s still got a few missing parts.”

“I thought she got destroyed near Vietnam?” Baze turned to Kay again. 

“Salvageable,” Kay corrected him. “She’s destroyed but salvageable. It’s feasible to put her back together in Taiwan.”

“And her pilots?” Baze shook his head. “I thought one of them—”

“That part’s missing, too,” Cassian supplied, and it told Baze all he needed to know: Rogue Alpha was going to need a new team to pilot her, identities pending. 

He dozed off a little after the quick briefing, then woke up to the sound of conversation he couldn’t quite follow. Baze’s first language was not English but he was fluent enough to read and write orders and reports in the same language. Whatever was passing between Cassian and Jyn was not the English that he knew, though. Most of their words were spoken in it but there were those that were replaced with something that reminded him vaguely of Spanish. Spanglish? 

“Mexlish,” Kay told Baze when he found an opportunity to quiz the rangers. “Cassian’s Mexican.”

The Drift had made it possible for both of them to communicate in two languages, using words that were closer to their sentiments whenever possible. There were things you could only explain in Mexican and vice versa. Jyn’s tongue was still too tough to properly enunciate some of the words, but Cassian understood her all the same. 

Baze spent the rest of the trip taking stock of all that he knew, which, quite like the PPDC right now, wasn’t much: they had two jaegers—one and a _half_ jaeger, and only one of them 100% deployable besides. They were the resistance of a resistance and they would have to find a way to somehow operate as an entire army in spite of their rather emaciated numbers and resources. He didn’t even know that Kaohsiung had a Shatterdome. 

Later on, as they were gliding down, past the thick clouds and the last of the fog, he would realize that this was because there _was_ no Shatterdome in Kaohsiung. What he took as rows of warehouses turned out, upon closer inspection, to _be_ such. And Baze was very confused. 

He stepped out of the landed helicopter with his questions painted clearly on his face, looking up at his new home. Jyn and Cassian had hurried on ahead to attend to some urgent ranger business, leaving him with Kay sweeping his arm across the gray landscape. 

“Welcome to Pier 0!” the man said, and that was all the explanation he was rewarded for his troubles. 

Pier 0—the pier that never was. There was some charm to it, something romantic about it. They were the last frontier, humanity’s only hope. 

Their brand was emblazoned all over the pier, each building carrying it on its walls, like a flag. They were old structures, too—some made of stone, others steel, the rest glass and wood and whatever else had been feasible at the time the entire place was finished. One of the buildings he could see across the distance rose high like a step pyramid. He couldn’t begin to imagine how they would all function without a Shatterdome—where the hell were the jaegers, anyway? 

“Where the hell are the jaegers?” he cried over the sound of another chopper touching down. 

“Look down,” Kay said. 

Baze glanced at his feet then looked up to Kay again, brows pulled tightly together, uncomprehending. 

“Look down!”

“I’m only seeing my feet!”

“That’s ‘cause you’re standing on ‘em,” Kay cackled. 

Baze had to look again a second time, practically throwing down his eyes before he caught the fullness of Kay’s meaning: the jaegers were underground, buried beneath the earth. 

“It’s a miracle we found any of the kaiju bunkers intact and we’d hate to let them go to waste. I’ll give you a tour when you’re ready.” Kay raised his hand and waved—to someone over Baze’s shoulder. 

Baze started to turn to look, only to bump his shoulder into a rushing body, apologizing as he went. 

Even when the man had been the one who stumbled and nearly fell to his face, pack sagging and slipping off his shoulder. “Sorry,” he said when he picked himself up and turned, wide eyes staring at Baze, full of anxiety. “Sorry!” he said again, voice husky. Baze had never met him before. 

But he knew him—by name and reputation. The same way his brother had been known by the people he’d never met in his lifetime. 

“Bodhi Rook?” Baze whispered to himself, stunned at the man’s presence. But Bodhi Rook had only apologized to him one more time before he was running towards Kay again, full of haste. He was thinner than he remembered—although perhaps it was that he’d _gotten_ thinner, _much_ thinner, from his official dossier. He would be, Baze reckoned, after what he was put through in the sea near Vietnam. 

His hair, which was once kept short, now trailed behind him in a low, messy ponytail. His flight suit, which resembled that of a jumphawk pilot’s, looked as if it was ready to slip off his shoulders. Baze couldn’t imagine how he might survive another rodeo against a kaiju at his present state. He couldn’t believe that the PPDC could be serious with him, and where was his co-pilot besides? 

Baze turned around, looking for them. 

And it was the last person on earth he expected to see in the fight before the world ended, all dressed in black. Baze would have been less surprised if he’d discovered that his memories were playing games with him, and he’d come to believe that this was the case when he marched closer for a better look. Just to make sure that he was wrong. 

But he wasn’t—he really _was_ there. Standing by the open door of the second chopper, he laid a hand atop his wooden walking stick, squaring his shoulders as he inhaled the cold air of Taiwan at December. He held it briefly, then let it out slowly, his shoulders sagging even when his spine remained straight. He tilted his chin up slightly, just a little, and on his face, Baze swore he could see the graceful curve of a soft smile—and that was it. 

That was all Baze needed to know that this man could be no other than Chirrut Imwe.


	3. Chapter 3

Baze had first met Chirrut Imwe in the Kwoon Training Room of the Jaeger Academy at Kodiak Island, back when he was still one of the many trying to be one of the few who would one day pilot a jaeger before he had a change of heart. He remembered clearly that Chirrut was looking at him from across the room, outer arm stretched out and tucked within the inner one’s elbow. They were doing a couple of warm-ups before the lesson started. Jed had been helping Baze with his. When he caught him watching, Chirrut grinned, waved, and switched arms. He’d had on a loose white tank top then that bellowed around his waist with a collar that dipped low to expose his clavicle and the soft chiseled line of his chest, paired with standard-issued trackers and nothing for his feet. He was a man carved in leanness and muscles.

Chirrut had been the first volunteer for a demonstration of basic bushido positions. Baze would never forget how he beat his opponent in under a minute with less than five strokes. Half the class had reacted in awe a second too late while the others were already on their feet either in praises or in disbelief, too stunned by Chirrut’s performance. Their instructor had found a hundred and one mistakes in Chirrut’s forms but Chirrut had been cocky then. And he would be in a long while yet until he and Jed established Drift Compatibility. No one moved like Chirrut, and no one had ever been so lightning fast and accurate—not even Jed during their compatibility match. Ever since then, Baze had come to admire Chirrut Imwe. 

Was it any wonder that he was rushing towards him, in spite of the time that had passed? Half-walking, half-running. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been so drawn by the mere hint of the man but it felt wrong not to be otherwise, even now. 

“Chirrut?” he almost cried when he stumbled near his reach. Chirrut responded with a deep curling of his brow and a fast frown, dipping his head as he turned towards his direction. It was as if he couldn’t comprehend the idea that someone in this new place could have any connection to him. _Still_ have a connection to him? It occurred to Baze suddenly that perhaps, after his last mission, he’d wanted to separate from everything and everyone that he knew, all that was ever related to that part of his life that was no longer real. The thought was powerful enough to sink Baze’s spirit just a little lower, killing his initial excitement. 

But then Chirrut had smiled suddenly—and nodded in complete understanding. “Baze Malbus,” he said in recognition. Baze realized then why Chirrut had taken long to return the greeting. He’d only assumed after all that the man would know him so easily in spite of the years that passed without communication. It was a shocking reminder of something that had never left his mind but seemed unable to truly grasp until now: Chirrut Imwe was blind. Permanently. He could not see Baze Malbus and could only rely on his voice to mark him. 

“They told me you were coming,” he went on in much the same spirits, standing in attention, hands folded over the top of his thick russet walking staff, plain in every side that Baze could see. He smiled at Baze and for a second, he forgot his surprise. 

“They did?” he asked, perfectly dumb. “I wasn’t…I mean, I didn’t know news could travel that fast. I’d only accepted…” At least three hours ago, but he didn’t want to disappoint Chirrut just now. 

That smile fell and became an inquisitive pout. No matter how much Baze tried to hide from him, it seemed that Chirrut would always be a step ahead of him. He didn’t need to know how long it took Baze to rejoin the program, only that he had not jumped so easily at it. “So they didn’t tell you I was coming,” was then his conclusion. 

Baze didn’t know what to say—what did he mean by that? What would have driven Chirrut to think that he would have been the perfect bait? A gentle heat filled his cheeks and touched the peak of his ears. 

Nevertheless, Chirrut picked himself up again and offered his hand, saying, “It’s good to see you again.”

“See?” Baze spat carelessly, reaching to take his hand even when his mind was on something else. “But you’re…” he paused uncertainly. 

“Blind?” Chirrut suggested. Curling his brows, he tilted his head a little to one side, thinking out loud, “Last I recalled, being blind meant you couldn’t use your eyes to see.” He raised his brow at Baze. “Not that you couldn’t use words like _see_.” It was the first lesson he would ever get from the man in a while again. It must have been what brought up the cheerful smile on Chirrut’s face after. It seemed as if he’d never once been removed from his element—he’d always been a witty man, a funny man. 

Baze smiled slightly. It felt good to be on the receiving end of his jabs again. He realized then how much he’d missed it. 

“Hey!”

Baze snapped and whirled to the sudden voice. It led him to Kay and Bodhi up ahead of them, the former waving to draw his attention. 

“Report to the LOCCENT, the commander wants to see you.”

Baze waved back his assent. 

“So,” Chirrut began, reaching down to hoist his camp bag over his shoulder, like a signal of sorts that he was ready to move. “What’s brought you out here if you’re so reluctant to join us?”

“What else?” Baze mumbled, his free hand rising to Chirrut’s elbow without thought. He was a blind man in foreign territory where he might need a guide to stop him from smacking into walls—but Baze had come up with nothing, catching only air when he folded his fingers. Chirrut had quite literally slipped free from his grasp. An unobservant man might have thought that he’d simply missed but Baze had caught the shift in Chirrut’s steps and the subtle swing of his arm, all without breaking stride. Chirrut had not wanted to be held. So Baze no longer pursued him and left him to his own devices. “I’m only good at fixing things so that’s what I’m here to do.”

“And you’d think they’d have better options.” Chirrut smirked as Baze snorted. 

“No one wants to be at the front when the world ends, Chirrut.” Baze shrugged. “But some of us are just morons, I guess.”

Chirrut laughed. “Better than other morons who don’t get paid. There’s a chance Heaven accepts dollars.”

Baze chuckled. They walked in a somewhat leisurely pace, both of them. If one turned a blind eye to the PPDC Eagle and the uniforms, the choppers and the heavy equipment that surrounded them, one could almost believe that they hadn’t just been hired for a last ditch attempt to save the world. That perhaps they were just a pair of friends walking home after a long night out. “And you? What are you here for?”

“Someone needs to manage the mess hall.”

“Yeah, and I figured you don’t have the qualifications for that.”

Chirrut threw back his head and let out a hearty laughter. “Now, you ought to be nice to me if you don’t want to find nails in your congee.”

“They’d let a vengeful man like that in the kitchen?”

Chirrut grinned. “You’d be surprised what sort of men they let in nowadays.” As an example, he raised his russet walking stick and asked, “Do you know where I found this?”

“Is that a hanbo stick?” Baze was surprised. 

“There’s more where this came from,” Chirrut shared helpfully, as if Baze had asked and it was an item on sale. “Who would have thought they would let a blind man carry this around?”

“So you didn’t steal it?”

The hanbo returned to the concrete with a sharp tap. Chirrut sighed and directed a tired frown towards Baze’s general perimeter. In spite of himself, Baze grinned and chuckled. “For your information, I need it for my job,” he said. 

“Your job?” Baze’s brows rose. “Are you a Kwoon Instructor now?”

“What’s so surprising about that?”

Chirrut’s response had been delivered as a matter of fact which served only to throw Baze’s eyes wide open. “You’re serious?” he choked. 

“Giant murderous lizards crawl out of the depths of the earth and you believe that while a blind man learns how to teach Jaeger Bushido and suddenly, it’s like I regrew a pair of eyes with laser vision.” Chirrut directed another high brow at Baze’s sense of reality, cheeks and lips heavy with judgement and the lack of amusement. “Just to make things clearer, one of those was a joke, and I’m pretty sure I know which one it is.”

“I’m not saying I don’t believe you,” Baze spoke calmly, even though he had never wished to be swallowed up by the ground until then for such an embarrassing reaction, “and I wasn’t trying to doubt you. But…the logistics of it just evades me for now.” For what it was worth, he threw a shrug. 

Chirrut harrumphed, pulling his tall collar up, higher around his neck. “Only if you lack faith,” he said, before he put his back to Baze, marching on faster, without hesitation. Baze might have been alarmed if it wasn’t just a straight line down the road, where they were following Kay and Bodhi Rook, themselves contained in a private conversation. 

He grunted. Hefting the strap of his pack again, he decided to respect the distance Chirrut put between the two of them, even though he still watched him closely. Just in case. 

They kept the South China Sea (or whatever it was called these days, following years of arbitral hearings) to their left and the warehouses, side to side with each other, to their right. Clusters of green from towering trees peeked over their flat roofs from the back. A little further, Baze realized that they must have encroached upon nature’s territory to set up base, preservation be damned. Perhaps those kaiju cultists had a point, after all: mankind would continue to destroy whatever came from the earth to save its hide.   
At the end of the road stood the step pyramid he saw from the landing pad, larger and older than he’d first realized, as if to match the dark green forest growing denser at its back. It was like the overseer of things, and a hub. The heart and the mind of their branch of the resistance. At its peak, Baze wagered someone with a good pair of eyes could see to the end of the pier. 

“What does it look like?” Chirrut asked him when he stood next to him to study the megastructure. Baze hadn’t expected the man to stop and wait for him but he figured even a blind man with a hanbo stick had his limits.

Baze glanced at him once, sightless eyes looking at the ziggurat, looked at it himself and shrugged. “It’s a pyramid. Like one of those things from Mexico.”

“That’s nice, but what does it _look_ like? What is it that you _see_?”

Not for the first and as it turns out, not for the last time since they met, Baze was getting frustrated at Chirrut, even more because he couldn’t tell if the man was just picking on him or if this was just another trick question. Like the thing with the hanbo stick. Or if he was being serious, like the way he looked with the soft knot between his brows and the slight frown—but he stood with his shoulders down and his hands layered on top of each other on his stick like what a man of patience would look. 

He decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Baze could not keep his sigh to himself, though, when he turned again to the pyramid, trying to come up with an acceptable answer. “It’s old,” he began, then paused to reconsider. “I mean it _looks_ old, like it’s meant to look like it’s older than any of us.” Forgetting that his friend was blind, he pointed up to the top. “There are green stains running down the steps but the concrete is intact. This thing isn’t even older than five years.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Chirrut smiled, though he faced no one. “They say a ranger’s number one cause of death is drowning in his Conn-Pod—but I’d hate to be the first to die because I got stuck under my roof.” Just like that, it seemed that they were in speaking terms again. Baze figured Chirrut must have dragged his grudge into tatters earlier. 

Raising his brow at Chirrut, Baze reminded him, “That was three years ago.” He didn’t flinch. He didn’t have to even if he tried—they’d both lost someone close to them three years ago. 

Chirrut smacked himself on his forehead. “Of course. How did I forget that?”

Much farther from them, Kay and Bodhi had stopped at the entrance of the ziggurat, too. Its base was wide open and deep going in, perfect for fitting in large equipment or perhaps an army of freedom fighters. They stood facing each other, and Kay had drawn himself down to meet Bodhi’s height. 

His long arm reached out and his hand fell on the former ranger’s shoulder as he said, “I’m gonna need you to go through this one more time, okay?”

Trapped, Bodhi nodded. 

Baze stood helplessly behind him as Kay clapped him on his shoulder once and turned him around to enter the pyramid. To face his future.

⚠

“I tell you I’d been teaching Jaeger Bushido and you don’t believe me. What makes this time any different?”

“Because this time,” Baze gasped, hurrying after Chirrut and capturing him with a hand on his shoulder before they advanced further into the expansive room that was dark except for the light of the monitors flashing colorful lines across the space, “I’m serious— _more_ serious.” The correction was immediate, spurned on by Chirrut’s frowning look, directed at the space between his head and his shoulder. In one breath, he asked, “What are you doing here, really? You’re not here to teach trainees, this place hasn’t got any of them lying around.”

“Not yet, Engineer.” The answer came from a woman. Baze whirled. 

He saw her approaching from the central aisle, a white ghost with short red hair and an immaculately pristine pantsuit gliding through the room’s solemn darkness. She passed without notice from any of the officers hunched over or swinging around terminals, deaf to the reports of percentages or all-clears flying overhead. Almost like the music of the first day of work. 

“We’re still compiling the initial list of candidates who’ll be flying in from Hong Kong. And when they do,” she gestured to the blind man bowing with a smile, “it will be Master Imwe’s responsibility to find the perfect match to pilot Rogue Alpha.”

“She’s not yet ready,” Baze protested mildly with the obvious, but she had surprised him with her appearance. 

“The goal is to have her ready by then,” she replied easily. “We are anticipating the arrival of her parts within twelve hours. Her team is here and waiting.”

“And before you might think about questioning her,” Chirrut interrupted, leaning towards Baze for good measure, even though his voice was not so soft that only they could hear it, “that’s Commander Mothma you’re speaking with.”

Commander Mothma confirmed this by smiling shyly, dipping her head a little. 

Baze retaliated by popping a brow and whispering to Chirrut, “If you’re trying to ask her for a favor, you’ve got a long way to go.” He faced Mothma before Chirrut could say something again. “What’s the problem with _marshal_?”

“It’s reserved only for the formal head of a shatterdome, and this isn’t one of them,” Mothma answered, smiling still. “But I’m no longer a senator nor am I a member of the United Nations anymore. I’m just a private citizen with enough sympathy and sense to help keep the machine running just a little longer. But for ease of communication, you may call me commander. I’ll be the marshal’s representative in this station.”

“Which gives you just as much power as a real marshal, doesn’t it?”

“Just as much responsibility,” Mothma said. Her soft voice matched her humility well. “Gentlemen, I’ll not keep you here much longer. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

“We’re at your service,” Chirrut said with another bow. Baze looked up, past Mothma’s shoulder to find Kay bent over the frontal terminals, resuming his role, he figured, as mission controller. He raised his hand in goodbye and Kay did the same. Bodhi was nowhere to be found. He couldn’t explain why that had relieved him. 

At Chirrut’s prompt, he turned and left the LOCCENT.

⚠

“What the hell was that all about?”

Baze felt he ought to be proud of himself for not flinching when Chirrut spat him the question—because even when he hadn’t, he was determined to explain himself one way or another. 

Together, they stepped out of the lift that led them to the second floor apartments, located in one of those warehouses near the ziggurat where they’d been led not by a uniform but by a card key, each with their names on it. This was the first time they’d ever truly been on their own since either of them landed in the base. Earlier, they’d been following Kay and Bodhi, sharing a lift with them that brought them all to the LOCCENT to meet Mothma. The presence of their company had silenced Baze’s raging imagination. That had been the part that Chirrut was now demanding answers for. 

Baze huffed out a small quiet sigh as he began. “There was something Kay said earlier that I’d overheard. They were in front of the ziggurat when he told Bodhi he needed him to go through this one more time. I thought Kay had meant for Bodhi to jockey again, one more time. Having heard that after you called yourself a ranger…” He trailed off. He turned to Chirrut walking beside him, the man smiling and nodding, to give him the cue to finish his thought. 

“You thought we were going to be Rogue Alpha’s new team,” he guessed correctly. Chirrut shook his head. “I wouldn’t even dream of it.”

“Team Mark II for life?”

Chirrut grinned. “That’s the cover story,” he said before he cleared his throat. “There’s a saying that goes: two’s company, three’s a crowd, four’s a party.”

“Uh huh.”

“You do not want that in the Drift, Baze,” Chirrut said. “I cannot Drift with another broken pilot. And I don’t think Bodhi can carry the load of my and Jed’s shared memories. On top of his and his mother’s.”

From the silence that followed, it was clear that Baze hadn’t thought of it that way. 

“It isn’t like…wearing socks,” Chirrut added. “You can’t switch us around when one half of one pair has become too worn. You know, everything sticks with you. His regrets, his ambitions. The first thought he makes after the initial Drift. And the last.”

Baze heard it again—Kay shouting for Jed not to disengage, Chirrut’s scream filling the room in its broken staccato. In his grieving days, he’d often wondered what his twin’s final thought was. He’d always assumed that it was about the mission. What needed to be done and what he needed to do to finish the job. That was the way Jed worked—objective and quick. 

“Does that answer your question now?” Chirrut asked, smirking slightly. “Do you believe me now?”

Baze meant to snort but hesitated at the last second, so it came out as a gruff breath. “I never meant to make it seem like I didn’t believe you. I’m sorry, Chirrut,” he said, and Chirrut’s smile widened and he nodded. “Maybe it’s been longer than I thought. Maybe it’s the nerves of being back in the Corps.”

“Nervous! You?” Chirrut laughed, throwing his head back for it and then forward, shaking his head in disbelief. “Not my Baze,” he said, and not for the first time, Baze felt glad that Chirrut was too blind to see his ears turn red. “It was my mistake too, you know?” he admitted, seemingly all of a sudden. “In my head, I thought you were Jed. Didn’t you wonder why I took so long to remember you?” He shook his head. “You sound so much like him. So I was shocked by your reaction. I was thinking…but Jed would have known. Jed would have believed.” With another smile, he said, “But you’re not Jed, are you?”

An apology was right there, ready to spring off the tip of his tongue, because he was not Jed. 

He would be grateful later that Chirrut had interrupted it, going on to say, “You’re Baze Malbus, and you are different. Jed had always been black and white. It’s either you are or you aren’t. You can or you can’t. But you…”

Baze felt the origins of a smirk. _Me?_ he’d been about to ask, but Chirrut’s hand caused him to stop, rising to alight upon the center of his chest. Baze ceased all movements at once—he didn’t know what Chirrut was up to this time, and he was a little confused about what he ought to do, but he was more curious. About why Chirrut’s touch shifted a bit until it was right where his heart was beating, which made the blind man happier. 

“You care more than you let on,” Chirrut said of him, to him. “You care more than you realize. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be standing here, would you?”

Baze didn’t know what that had to do with anything. So maybe he did but what did it matter? He didn’t know what Chirrut was angling at, or if he only wanted to say that for the sake of it. 

His heart felt cold all of a sudden when Chirrut’s hand left and returned to his walking stick. 

“Is this us, then?” he asked. 

Like a magic spell, it snapped Baze out of his thoughts. He looked around half-wildly (they’d at least made some progress before they stopped to chat) before he consulted his card key and stumbled forward. “Not yet. This way.”

His room was somewhere at the center of the corridor, and Chirrut was right across him, something that was noted happily. At least he would be close by to assist him, Baze thought with great attention. 

“I’m here,” Baze said. Pointing to Chirrut’s door, he added, “You’re there. Just in front of me.”

Chirrut pivoted himself accordingly to his clues, marching first to Baze’s door and then counting the steps to his, hands reaching out to catch the bars and the locks securing his room. He grinned. “So it is,” he said. He slipped his card in through the lock, then pulled the heavy door open himself to step in. He turned around awkwardly between his doorframe to stare at the wall next to Baze. 

Baze consciously stepped quietly into his line of vision. 

“Wake me up before you look for the mess hall. Don’t leave a blind man wandering around.”

“You’re telling me that now after you refused my help earlier?” Baze raised a brow. 

Chirrut grinned. “Have a good nap, then.”

He pulled the door shut after him, leaving Baze in the corridor on his own. All of a sudden, the pack over his shoulder felt heavy, and he remembered he’d stuffed his entire life so far in it. 

The lock gave a satisfying click when he slid his key in. Baze opened the door and stepped through.

⚠

It was well past noon by the time Baze had found time for himself to do a little bit more touring. The LOCCENT was still bursting with urgent activity and Kay was caught right in the middle of its net. He didn’t know what Chirrut would achieve when he told Baze he was going to take a look at the control room and left. So on his own, then, he decided he ought to be looking into something else, as well.

The jaegers weren’t completely sunken underground; one of the tallest warehouses planted next to the ziggurat had been hollowed out to make the room that was required for the jaeger’s head. Everything else stood below a massive gate, accessible by visitors through a series of lifts, stairwells, catwalks and poles. 

Down by the jaeger’s feet, Baze felt an intense feeling of claustrophobia. He was about two-hundred and fifty feet underground—the thought occurred to him as he craned his neck up, stretching his neck as long as was humanly possible trying to look past the striking beams of steel and floodlights that obscured the majority of the machine from his unaided eyes. 

Even so, Rebel Hope was love at first sight—a sentinel wrought in polished black that was framed in gold, the ports and the shafts for retractable and hidden weapons, her exhausts blended smoothly into her armor. Baze had found them as he was descending through the lift, even the ones located under the jaeger’s double plates. 

He carried a datapad in his hand that contained her entire specs and record. Baze was alone in the jaeger bay, a surprising luxury, and he meant to take advantage of that for as long as he could have it. 

Which, as it turned out, was not long at all—he’d been walking around one side of Rebel’s shoes before he caught the splash of light about a hundred or two meters of shadows away from him. For the most part, only empty floor space was illuminated. 

Close to the wall facing the jaeger, though, was a boy—at least he looked like it because he looked small under his too-large clothes. The boyish man sat with his knees up and inside his arms. His long hair was tied loosely at his back, and he looked up to the jaeger with the eyes of someone dreaming. 

Baze realized with a start that he had met the man earlier that day—he was Bodhi Rook. Former pilot—from what he knew, at least—of the jaeger known as Rogue Alpha. 

Who he realized, another second later, was the suspended and patched up metal he was looking at, all dressed in military greens, bronzes and silver, a flag of the UK, the Rooks’ home country, painted on its breast. With only one leg intact, her balance relied on the strength of cables attached to various points of her frame to the walls and the braces on top. Both her arms were gone as well as one part of her shoulder, and the wings that were extended from her back like an awkward butterfly’s, too short to be intended for real flight, were all skeleton and wire and no plating. It was a gruesome sight to behold, and Baze couldn’t imagine how Bodhi could still look at it without the eyes of horror. 

He forgot to watch himself when he approached; if he’d been a predator, his prey would have fled long before he stepped into the half-circle of light. Bodhi turned with a snap, then unfolded himself to his fullest height like a badly drawn animation with no regard to human bones and limitations. Baze stumbled back, both surprised and impressed by his liquid reflexes. 

“You’re…” Bodhi began, visibly trying to swallow something as difficult as a rock. “A, are you…” He gestured to Rogue. “Her…a, are you her team? Her team…” He tried again, right hand opening out to Baze like a flower, “Are you her team?”

It was a vague question to be asked but thanks to Bodhi’s numerous repetitions, Baze had enough time to comprehend his meaning. “No, I’m Rebel Hope’s,” he said, gesturing to the magnificent beast behind him. 

“Oh!” Bodhi said and smiled, teeth out. He wiped his hands down his pants. Baze realized with a pleasant surprise that the smile hadn’t come out of politeness but from genuine delight. “Mark III,” he commented out of the blue. “That’s…” This time, he indicated the broken jaeger in front of him, even stepping back as if to invite Baze to come closer so he did. “That’s Rogue Alpha. She’s not much now but her parts are coming.”

Whatever was left of her was all sleek edges and smart curves—she didn’t exactly have any full plates, only smaller pieces of them that were joined in subtle cuts to ease with the bending. Baze had to wonder if he could have thought of anything like that if he’d been the one who designed it. 

He flicked a hand to the splintered giant, slipping the other one in one of his pockets. “You driving her, then?” he asked. 

“Uh…yes?” Bodhi answered uncertainly. His hand crept up to his chest. “I’m…I’m the pilot? _I’m_ the pilot. I mean, I _was_ the pilot. I’m…” He shrugged. “I’m no longer the pilot. I’m just here to look after her now.” That hand swept to the jaeger. “Make sure the parts fit and that she’s good as new.” He smiled again, the one that seemed to sparkle on its own like the last one. “F, for the new team, of course,” he hurried to assure Baze. 

He couldn’t remember if he knew of anyone else, friend or acquaintance, who could yet teach Bodhi a lesson on generosity. He smiled without reservations. He wouldn’t let trauma get in the way of what had to be done, or pride and rangers were known for their pride. When Kay asked him to do this, perhaps to face his fears one more time, he had assented quickly. As if he hadn’t felt his co-pilot, his mother, die in his head in a snap due to neural overload. Baze knew that from the reports he’d overheard. He knew Bodhi had carried on the fight and finished it on his own for one hour, one hour and a half. Some say he hadn’t quite come out the same way after the strain—and could anyone blame him? Baze personally knew of one other person who’d lasted mere minutes—and that alone had been too much. 

“And after?” Baze asked. He shrugged when Bodhi turned to face him, removing his sight from his beloved jaeger. “After you’ve shown ‘em around, taught ‘em the ropes, what then?”

“Th, they learn to pilot her and I go back to my job in full,” Bodhi said with a careless toss of his hand to return the shrug. He swung on his feet, first right then left. “My real job, I mean, my new one.”

“The one you came back for.”

“Back?” Bodhi shook his head in confusion. “Never…I never came back, I never left. I was always here. After…after,” he made a gesture as if he was placing something in a bucket beside him, eyes on Baze. “After…what happened, I became a jumphawk pilot.” He shrugged. “I always have been ever since.” He started nodding again, smiling self-consciously though he still managed to make it look natural. “B, but, but uhh…” He indicated him with a hand. “Y, you? What about you? Did you leave?”

In every sense of the word, he did. After he received his severance pay, he distanced himself from the PPDC and decided to live his own life for once. The most recent of his personal history had all been dictated by the Defense Corp. He and Jed had joined because they thought they could help win back their home and he’d shifted to weapons and jaeger engineering for pretty much the same reason. 

But even in his freedom, he surrounded himself in jaegers, pictures, newsclips. Kay had asked him why he hadn’t join the efforts at the Wall and he felt insulted on behalf of his brother and his past. He’d come to the airport for much the same reason. Chirrut had told him that he was still standing there because he cared more than he realized. And maybe he did and maybe he didn’t but he couldn’t say. Only that he came also because this was his life, and it had been the only one he knew to live. 

With a tender smile of his own, Baze shook his head. “I guess I never left, too.”

⚠

That night, he remembered his brother again.

They were back in the a bridge to Ruby Force’s Conn-Pod, abyss dropping well below them at either side. They stood facing each other, smiling as they would. 

“We’ll come back,” Jed said, clapping him on his shoulder. 

“I know,” Baze said, nodding. “You always do.”

Jed pulled the door shut after him. The entire room started flashing red. 

Confusing noises filled the entire space: sirens, conflicting reports, the angry whirs of drills, a frightening banging noise, as if they were all inside a sinking jaeger and the water pressure was crushing them in. Officers rushed and bent over glowing terminals, the LOCCENT was _full_ of everything in it. Someone was shrieking through the filter of the radio, someone else was barking out orders. Desperately. 

Baze turned back to the door and Jed was standing there in his battle armor, beside Chirrut looking small in his black top and bottoms, the hanbo stick back in his hand. He smiled at Baze, as if he could see. 

He wanted to smile back to him but he knew he was a terrible lie. The whole thing was a terrible lie.

⚠

Baze woke up with a start. There was a layer of cold sweat over his face, and his hands felt clammy from the tension of the dream. His heart was ramming in his chest which made it a struggle to catch his breath but the world was blissfully quiet.

Even though it was dark. Even though it flashed red, making every contour, every shadow in his room look severe. 

He jumped when the banging sounds returned, swinging to face the door from his bed. 

When he opened it after some time of struggling with his fingers and the series locks on his door, he found that Chirrut was at the opposite side, wild-eyed though he missed his face. He was dressed in a loose dark shirt and a pair of gray trackers with nothing on his feet. 

“Didn’t you hear?” he gasped, white knuckles gripping his hanbo stick. The sound of the sirens from the end of the hallway finally reached him. “ _Kaiju_.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Chirrut, let’s go!!”

Baze had barely gotten his foot through his boot before he was bolting down the empty hallway, the crash of his feet echoing, the walls flashing a color like blood. Chirrut chased after him on lighter feet though how he could keep track of him at all, Baze couldn’t say. His friend was blind and there were sirens blaring left and right that would have surely overpowered the sound of his running feet. He couldn’t hear them himself, only the woman speaking between each round in alternating English and Mandarin: “Kaiju approaching. Please head to your respective Anti-Kaiju Refuge. Kaiju approaching…”

He nearly crashed into a Strike Trooper in full fighting regalia when he jumped out of the warehouse and pivoted sharply to the direction of the ziggurat. The officer might have said something about being out at this time but Baze had shoved him off before he heard any of it. There was a kaiju somewhere out there, approaching who knew where and God knew how fast. Those thoughts ran in cycles in his head as he looked out to the dark beach to his left, heard its gurgling, splashing waters like a warning of how close they were to certain death—or how fast it was coming for them.

“Chirrut, come on!!”

“I’m right behind you!”

Baze couldn’t say he did not feel relieved when he heard that. 

They dove into the ziggurat at the last minute before the steel gates slammed home with a bursting echo. Baze glared at the startled Strike Troopers on guard duty before he escaped their angry retaliation with a hasty path to the lifts. He knew from his earlier tour that on such events as this, the base had numerous underground tunnels and bunkers connecting one structure to another. He had no doubts that if he gave them the chance, they would be happy to demonstrate their security protocols on him and Chirrut without a second thought. 

Away from the sirens and the pulsing red lights, the LOCCENT was a dark, silent haven. Baze had to stop himself from hurrying forward before he barreled into someone, something he couldn’t see and besides, he knew he wasn’t needed at the front. 

Kay was there with one hand on the main computer and the other on his waist, his weight on one leg. “...gory IV, codename Ochui,” he was saying to the room. “Heading up to Shanghai.”

“Rebels,” Mothma began, addressing the rangers in their black and gold battle armor, swathed in the muted blue lights of the LOCCENT. “We won’t have clear visuals of you outside of the jumphawks so you are to keep the line open for us, we are to hear everything you say.”

“Roger that,” Jyn Erso said with the air that came from seven drops and seven kills. 

“And one more thing,” Mothma continued, “you may be on your own out there.”

A Mark III against a Category IV. Who’d ever heard of that? Baze felt his core muscles clenching with anxiety. 

“Godspeed,” Mothma said. The rangers turned away without a salute. Cassian crossed himself, bringing his thumb to his lips as they passed the cheering officers on their way to the lift. Chirrut chased after his departing shoulders with a, “Good luck!”

“We’ll come back,” Jyn assured him, hand flying to clasp with the one Chirrut had raised. “We always do,” she added, turning to Baze. 

Baze stared back in alarm. 

They were gone before he could stop them. And even when he tried, he knew he couldn’t, not only because he had no place in making that decision. 

Chirrut had moved his boot in front of his, his hanbo stick landing with a sharp tap. “What are you doing?” he hissed urgently. 

“You heard what Jyn said,” Baze snarled, keeping his voice low between them, his face close, his eyes on Chirrut’s sightless ones. “Those were the same words I told Jed before I sent him off to die!”

Doubtless he remembered. Baze could read it from the knot between his brows, the frown on his face. When he saw Chirrut by the landing pad, Baze had felt a kind of joy that came with reuniting with one of the few people who held a place in his heart. 

But this—this was the moment where he felt glad and truly grateful that Chirrut had decided to stick for the ride. No one else would have known what Baze was feeling then, except for the man who had been his brother’s co-pilot. Who had been with him until the last second. It made the burden of his fear easier to bear, no matter that it was still a heavy burden. 

“Have faith,” was all Chirrut said in consolation, reaching blindly for Baze’s hand as he once did with Jyn. Baze gave it to him and let Chirrut’s fingers squeeze it. “Just have faith, Baze Malbus. I’ve never known Jyn to go down in a fight.” He smiled for good measure, and that was all he said. 

It wasn’t enough to lift the weight from his chest, but it was more than nothing. Baze held onto Chirrut’s smile and his faith, the same way he held onto his hand.

“Engage drop,” Mothma commanded. 

“Engaging drop, Ma’am,” Kay repeated. 

“ _Release for drop._ ” Cassian through the radio. 

Baze watched the directive pass from commander to pilot to machine from the surrounding screens, each one with their own set of data. There had been a time when he had been at full liberty to cross the darkness and stand by the mission controller to share _his_ screen but all there was now was the itch to do it, the ghost of a habit. It was a privilege he’d long given up on after the sour event that took his brother’s life. 

He glanced at Chirrut, gauging the man’s thoughts from his quiet face but there was nothing for him there. Only the gentle glow of terminal lights painting his face like a canvas. Even so, their hands remained linked. Baze tightened his grip around the younger man’s and received a brief smile for that. 

“Prepare for neural handshake,” Mothma said.   
“Preparing for neural handshake,” Kay echoed, fingers flying across his keyboards. “Starting in four…three…two…one…”

Everything proceeded like clockwork after. Across the shadows, he could see the light and the colors shifting, reflecting the mind meld, the rangers’ numerous statistics printed in vivid shades, a showcase of primary hues and so many things that could go wrong. 

“Neural handshake, steady and holding,” Kay announced at the end of the process and Baze realized he could breathe again. Their mission controller twirled back on his seat to face the room. “Hang on tight, this is no longer a test run!” He turned back to his controls his manic tapping reclaiming its role in the orchestra he was conducting. “Opening the gates of hell in four, three, two, one.”

A new set of sirens blasted, and for a minute, all Baze could think of was that they were dead. They were all dead. Something had gone wrong, the Shanghai Shatterdome was decommissioned and there was nothing that would get in the way of a kaiju invasion, not anymore. Not a wall, not a single prayer bead from whoever believed in them. Outside the sweeping windows, red light passed them in waves. And then the earth shook. 

Baze felt it rising from the flat of his feet, upsetting his balance so that he had to grab onto Chirrut’s walking stick before he toppled over the man and took him with him. Chirrut slapped a hand at the top of their pile of grips, holding tightly. His brows were furrowed in deep concentration. Baze heard the earth yawn open, like rocks groaning and rolling. He turned to the windows to face his death. 

He did not expect to see it in the form of a perfect chasm, its lips jeweled by white beads of light like a guiding halo for whatever was rising from within. Something black and polished, its head like a helmet with a full eye visor and a stunted Mohawk running down the back from the forehead. 

_Rebel Hope,_ Baze realized too many frantic moments too late. Kay had told him that the jaegers were buried beneath the earth and he had seen them for himself when he went down to look. She was as beautiful and sleek as the first time, now even godlier with her shining searchlights and the rings of gold around her middle torso which he knew was designed as an exhaust for the waste heat of her nuclear core. 

The Strike Troopers worked fast to attach her to the dangling cables from the hovering jumphawks, and then she was off, chopper blades working double time to birth her from her nest. The ground closed up after her. 

Baze felt unsettled by the silence and the darkness that followed. The room breathed a collective sigh of relief. Some had left their stations for a quick break to whatever, as if remembering that they still existed. He let go of Chirrut’s grip finally, looking at him.

_Have faith,_ his smile reminded Baze. _Just have faith._

“ _LOCCENT,_ ” Jyn Erso spoke up suddenly and everyone was back where they were needed. How much time had passed, he wondered. Baze took a step forward, trying to peer at whatever screens he could read. “ _We’re coming up to position._ ”

“ _Disengaging cables in t-minus one,_ ” Cassian followed. “ _Looks like we’re right on time._ ”

From their own scans, they could see it—the bogie named Ochui making a hysterical beeline towards Rebel Hope’s location distinguished by a blue dot, only miles away from Shanghai’s shores. 

“ _Disengaging cables now._ ”

On the screens, they saw Rebel Hope cutting herself loose from her jumphawks, landing on the water with a ceremonious splash. Her armor shifted smartly at the change of terrain, rising and sliding, keeping the water out of the ports that needed to stay dry and salt-free. 

“ _Cables disengaged._ ” Baze was surprised to hear the voice of Bodhi Rook through the radio. “ _We’re in position._ ”

Kay pulled himself to the mic. “Affirmative, Rook. Be prepared to evacuate when necessary—”

“ _Here it comes!!_ ” Cassian shouted. 

All eyes flew to the main screen, showing a top view of the ebon jaeger tensing as the dark waters began to swell like a womb, breaking when a dorsal fin struck past its seams. The rest of the kaiju’s anatomy followed soon after and along with it, its displeasure of being interrupted in its track in the form of a tight shriek. It was taller than it was bulky, with bony fins decorating the entirety of its back and callous serving as its primary defenses. In places, its skin sagged, except for the arm, the fore part of which was built like a canon, perfect for pummeling. 

Rebel didn’t wait for Ochui to try its effectivity on them. Without another second wasted, she ran for it, arms swinging madly, tearing a path down the water. The kaiju galloped forward, long limbs working like pistons, claws out to cut. 

The jaeger dove out of the way at the last minute, just about missing a downward strike perhaps by a hair. Baze couldn’t see exactly all that was happening but he could tell that Rebel hadn’t even so much as flinched. She slid and whirled as smoothly as a dancer who knew all her moves too well. She raised a dissembling right just as the pissed kaiju turned to meet her with bared fangs. 

Down went her serrated staff gripped tight by her transformed fist, crashing onto the bewildered kaiju’s crown. It was a good way to make Baze feel sorry for all the opponents they had first tested this move on, and he had a feeling this was a Jyn original. There was something about the brutality of the attack, coming first from the right and then the left, that seemed to match her personality, what little he knew of it. There was nothing wasted on twirls and frills, everything came with a swing and a bash. 

He thought he couldn’t be the only one gaping at the precision of her hits, of how well she managed and redirected some pent up anger inside her. By the time the kaiju had finally caught up with her fury, it was already decorated with thin lines of blue. 

The last strike had landed ineffectively on the kaiju’s barrel-shaped forearm—and then it was upon the jaeger, half a beat faster than the guarding left, charging around its boundaries to smash onto its shoulder and grab hold of the metal, crushing and twisting the plates. Baze couldn’t tell if the pilots were roaring more out of pain or out of rage—one seemed only to fuel the other. 

“Left shoulder reduced to 80% capacity!” Kay barked at his microphone, staring at the blinking vitals. “Rebels!”

“ _Don’t have to,_ ” Cassian grunted, “ _bloody well say it. We know how to read!_ ” Jyn’s growl tore through the radio when the kaiju reached for their right arm and started to twist it back, off its socket. “ _A la verga! Fine. You want my shoulder? I’ll give it to you. Jyn, get ready to dive!_ ”

The jaeger took a step back, bearing the combined weight of the two titans before it charged forward with two kicks and sent them both twisting in the air, placing the kaiju in the unfortunate position of being crushed by the machine. Baze couldn’t say if the roaring splash had been real or one supplied by a very healthy imagination. 

Rebel was the first to resurface, raising a staffless right which left her wide open for the kaiju’s fists. The impact had sent her flying backwards to crash back in the water, both Cassian’s and Jyn’s cries sounding off the radio, barely louder than Kay screaming his warning when the kaiju jumped and landed onto the thrashing jaeger with a burst of sound and bad news. The flashing lights reappeared again, a handful of terminals each shooting off warnings about different parts of the machine. 

Every one of them, Baze ticked off his head, each one like the kaiju’s frantic fists, like a rock that sunk his stomach lower. He couldn’t bare to look at Chirrut who stood quietly beside him, thinking God knows what thoughts. When the kaiju’s hand rose again and zoomed down into the water, he didn’t need to see to know where it landed. The pilots’ collective yell was enough. 

“How does it fight like a man?” he snarled. 

“ _Get this thing off us—!!_ ”

“ _—ng on for core release!!_ ”

The blast of solar flare right after Jyn’s cry shattered before the crack reached the startled LOCCENT, momentarily casting everything in daylight. Baze felt blinded when the dark blue of pre-dawn returned, missing the splash of the shrieking kaiju and the jaeger picking herself back up. 

“ _Power’s down to 50%,_ ” Jyn grunted. “ _Hull’s damaged but otherwise operational. Water damage is present but minimal as of the moment._ ”

“ _Switching to instruments,_ ” Cassian reported. “ _Rerouting power flow to main supply and artillery chain. Let’s send this bastard back to hell!!_ ”

“Boss,” Kay whirled back to the woman in white standing closely to his shoulder. “Rebel Hope’s down to her last life, we may need to send for backup.”

It took a solid beat of a moment before Mothma replied gravely, “Contact Hong Kong. Tell them to monitor the situation and to send reinforcements if they do not hear from us in ten minutes.”

“Ten?!” Baze exclaimed to himself. 

“Rebels,” Mothma addressed the microphone, leaning down to it. In the screen, the jaeger’s fists were dissembling again, replacing its fingers with the wide nozzle of a high-performing machine gun. “Hold your ground until 20% capacity then evacuate. Jumphawks, get ready to dive at any time.”

Different orders, all received with stubborn affirmation. Baze heard a hiss close to him and turned to see Chirrut frowning, glaring at the ground beneath his feet. 

He’d almost jumped at the sound of heavy artillery battering the target like the mother of all gatling guns. Each one of them flashed upon flight and explosion, with enough heat and power to level entire buildings. 

Not quite a kaiju braving a barrage of rockets, pummeling it at every step it wrestled to take, even when the projectiles were scraping and tearing at its hide. 

“Rebels, power down to 40,” Kay called to them. 

“ _Brace for impact, Jyn!_ ” Silence had barely taken the battlefield before the kaiju was shrieking and galloping towards the jaeger, hands and feet thrashing in the ocean. It leapt and landed with another bang, coming down with the steel giant. Another coolant had finally broken. 

Rebel Hope fell on her shoulder—then rolled and flung the creature back, off her. The kaiju crashed, sliding further in the water. Anger had painted its cry red with fury like a siren when it clambered back up its full height, streaked in blue and torn flesh though it was. 

Not quite the jaeger, which crumpled to one knee, driving one missing fist into the water like a beaten man. Even when Jyn said, “ _Initiating Stardust._ ”

Baze was confused, staring wildly at the screens that surrounded him. The jaeger was down but the pilots’ vitals were still green. 

The kaiju belted out the loudest of its challenge yet and leapt high, like a horribly shaped grasshopper aiming for the weakened Rebel. 

“ _Now!!_ ” Cassian yelled. 

“ _Stardust initiated._ ”

At the signal of the mechanical voice, the jaeger rose back to its feet, its chest exposed, its plates sliding open to reveal the multitude of ports Rebel had been hiding. Each one of them was loaded with something that sparkled as it shot up to the skies, like silver starlight in the night. The kaiju could do nothing but fall when they attached themselves to it. 

In a blink, every incendiary burst in white light, blending into the creature’s tight scream as it crashed in the water devoured completely in flames that would not die even when drenched. All its flailing seemed only to make the fire wilder and hotter. 

“ _Power at 25% capacity,_ ” said the same machine voice that announced the last attack when the jaeger aimed its left machine gun on the burning kaiju again and fired off shot after shot. Each one of them landed with a burst, a splash and a shriek. The pattern repeated itself for what seemed like a long time. 

It ended only when the kaiju had fallen in complete silence, and the fire was left to burn the water in peace. 

“ _Power at 20% capacity,_ ” reported the machine. 

“ _Kay,_ ” Cassian spoke up, breathing heavily. “ _Confirm signature._ ”

Kay expanded his view on one of his screens and jammed at a few keys again. He pulled the mic to report his findings. “Negative, bogie signature has gone cold. You’ve done it, Rebels!”

In one heartbeat, the entire LOCCENT came up in a roar of cheer, Baze among them. He heard the sharp tap of a hard stick against the floor and the whispered, “Yes!” that followed soon after. Chirrut had turned his face up with his eyes closed and the proudest smile on his face. _Have faith,_ that smile had once said. _Just have faith._

Baze reached out and clapped Chirrut on his shoulder. Before they could stop themselves, they pulled each other to a tight embrace, laughing, drunk in relief.

⚠

The base had gone to await the victorious crew in the landing pad. Baze had invited Chirrut to come with them and Chirrut had accepted, telling him he would be along soon. Too elated to ask him again, Baze went off to join the celebration.

Bodhi Rook had been responsible for the pilots’ safe arrival. They were received with a hero’s welcome, waving to the crowd which parted to let the rangers through. Baze watched them marching in their battle armors, both beaming and flushed. A string of beads was entangled within Cassian’s right fist while Jyn’s fingers were caught between his at the left. He caught their eyes and gave them two thumbs up. Jyn smiled at him before they passed. 

A quick party had been assembled in the mess hall. By then, Baze had more or less sobered up to realize that Chirrut would be missing it all. He retired to his bedroom after, staying up to wait for his friend who would surely be heading back himself soon. It had been a long night for the both of them. 

He hadn’t noticed he’d fallen asleep by the time he’d heard the familiar taps of Chirrut’s walking stick outside his door. By then, the blue hour had arrived at foggy Kaohsiung. Baze was immediately on his feet, stumbling towards the lock, hands moving in confused motions to open the door while he peered out the peephole to watch Chirrut pulling at his own door with little trouble. Baze had ceased his mission by then. 

Chirrut himself paused to look to him over his shoulder. Baze thought he might have smiled at him but he couldn’t say if it had been real or something that came up from a half-dream. Before Baze could ask Chirrut about it, the man had already stepped through the door and pulled it shut. 

After that, there seemed little else for Baze to do than to go back to sleep.

⚠

He never did find out what had kept him. It hadn’t been important—it wasn’t meant to be.

Until Baze had stopped by the commander’s door on his way to the lift heading down for the ground. He’d dropped by Kay’s station on account of work, the evening after the kaiju attack, and that was all he’d come up all the way to the LOCCENT for. 

He never meant to stand close to the door to listen to the conversation. “Yesterday was a close call. You saw it, Commander!” one said. 

“I know what it is, Master Imwe,” the other said. “We are doing something about it.”

“Not fast enough.”

“We are taking every precaution necessary to make sure that we do things right. We cannot afford any mistakes. This is not like sending troops out there to die by the dozens, so long as we outnumber the enemy. We need to find the best and we need to be extremely careful. Too much is at stake.”

Chirrut was quiet. 

“The last time I waited,” he said after a moment, “I lost my co-pilot.”

Baze held his breath, listening for the pause to break. 

“I am done waiting.”

He never found out how the discussion ended. He escaped before Chirrut could catch him lingering by the doorway.

⚠

He was calling to her before the door had even slid open, belting out a, “Hey!” that echoed as he stepped out of the lift. With a voice box that matched his size, plus the acoustics of the enclosed underground bay, Baze’s warning had come out effortlessly. Cassian and Bodhi surrounding their never-ending chess game on the floor glanced at him once, Bodhi backwards, then returned to their pieces. Baze waved to them too late, unseen by Bodhi who picked up a black rook and pressed the back of his hand to his lips, weighing his possible moves.

“You,” he went on, speaking to the brunette who sat cross-legged atop the bench with the physical plans, swinging around a wrench that was very close to the size of her arm. Surrounded by colossal parts of a jaeger, both broken and new, many connected to terminals on wheels running diagnostics, and tools averaging to the size of a human, she would have been well-hidden especially with her height. But Baze had seen her from the top while he was cutting the ruined wires off Rebel Hope’s bent left shoulder, and she had sent him racing back to earth. “Where’d you pick that up from?”

“I found it,” Jyn answered easily, holding the wrench to rest on her shoulder. She was dressed similarly to Baze Malbus, in a black tank top that fell without form to her waist and a pair of dark blue military pants, complete with the tight knot of hair at the back of her head. It was the kind of thing that someone would wear if they spent half their lives in the Kwoon Training Room and the other among broken jaegers lined up for repair. 

Which did not impress Baze. “Good for you, now give it back,” he said, reaching for the tool as he approached. 

The girl rolled her eyes, thoroughly unimpressed by Baze’s disapproval. “I know how to use it,” she insisted. 

“A doctor may know how to use a knife but that doesn’t make him a chef,” Baze argued, finally arriving at Jyn’s perch where he persisted with his demand, waving his fingers. “A ranger’s place is inside the jaeger, not outside one. Outside is my place. Now hand it over.”

Jyn snorted and slapped the thing lightly on Baze’s broad palm. She looked completely lacking in amusement. “You know, my dad’s an expert on J-Tech,” she said, rising to her booted feet after him as he passed. 

“That why you fight in a jaeger now?” Baze asked with a quick look back over his shoulder, much to Jyn’s discontent. “Rangers aren’t supposed to be here, this is an engineer’s world. Didn’t your father ever teach you that?” He’d half-expected her arm to be slithering around his frame to try and snatch her toy back so when it came, quick as a viper, he’d responded readily with a sharp, upward swing of his elbow, knocking her off her target. He whirled back to glare at her and received a look of confusion in return. 

“Papa taught me many things,” Jyn said with her characteristic boastfulness, finally concluding her pursuit in favor of crossing her arms and watching Baze work on her slightly parted feet. “He taught me how to read a blueprint and the people around me. He taught me that people aren’t always quite what they seem.”

Baze tossed the long wrench back with its siblings in the top tier of a tool drawer set, also on wheels. He looked back to Jyn and raised a brow in question. 

Jyn’s head swung side-to-side. “Okay, that was just for the sake of a segue,” she admitted. 

“Uh huh,” Baze said. Someone beckoned to him and he looked up to the team working on the left arm. They had finally detached it completely and were about to start lowering its parts. Baze had agreed to spot for them and signaled the first descent. 

“So how come we never heard about you and your co-pilot?” Jyn asked.

“That’s because I never had one, Jyn. So is this what having a little sister feels like?” Baze chuckled. Jyn eyed him for that last bit. “Why are you suddenly so interested?”

“Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine?” Jyn asked in turn, poking at Baze’s evasiveness. He switched his eyes from the jaeger hand being lowered to Jyn and then back again. “You’re not going to tell me someone who can move like that never became a ranger.”

“But someone did,” Baze raised his hands and gestured for the metal part to keep coming, “and that someone’s me.”

“So what happened?”

“Don’t I get to ask you a question?”

“Oh, so we’re playing a game now, are we?” 

Baze grinned while Jyn scoffed. “I’ll make it easy for my little sister.”

“Bugger off, you.”

“How did you and Cassian meet?”

“In the training room,” Jyn indulged him anyway, shrugging, free of care. “As you would. We almost killed each other.”

“As you would,” Baze chuckled again. He stepped back to make room for the descending hand at the empty floor space that pushed the boundary between the two jaegers Rebel Hope and Rogue Alpha, itself decorated by cranes and cables and its own repair team putting it together finally. “Wait, you’re serious?” he asked suddenly, turning to the stoic Jyn, stunned by her silence. 

“Yeah,” Jyn said. “He broke my nose, I broke his teeth, we called it square. Turns out we’re a match made in heaven.”

“No questions there,” Baze said, caught between awe and wariness. “So is that how it is with you kids these days?”

“If you wanna get to the top, you gotta break a few bones along the way,” Jyn explained as a matter of fact. “ _That’s_ how it’s always been.” She nodded to the winged jaeger next to hers. “That’s how it’s gonna be when these two finally come along.”

_When_ was indeed the question. Baze turned to see Rogue’s team at work, Rebel’s fist coming closer to the roof of his periphery. Her sight took him back to the office of the commander, to that tense discussion he had secretly become a part of. Whoever those two were, Chirrut was going to be the one to make them happen. “Got any news about that?” he asked, hoping for some insider news. 

“Not a one,” Jyn admitted, watching the work with him. “Whoever they are, they’re gonna have big shoes to fill.”

“ _You’d be surprised what sort of men they let in nowadays,_ ” Chirrut reminded him suddenly, the memory echoing back like a voice through a tunnel. 

“ _I am done waiting,_ ” Chirrut had also said. 

“Whoever they are,” Baze began, but failed to finish.

⚠

Since he left the Ranger pool, since Jed and Chirrut had gone and left him in the Tokyo Shatterdome on his own, Baze had steered clear of the training room in the day and the early hours of the evening. It had felt like knocking on the door to an old life, like growing out of a pair of old pants that was too embarrassing to try again.

So he would wait until everyone had had their chance, and then come midnight, he would take his. 

A quick session of Jaeger Bushido forms had always been Baze’s preferred alternative to a nightcap. It had started simply as a way to build his muscle memory and later evolved into a nighttime ritual that had stuck with him in spite of the change in occupation and management. 

This was going to be the first time in months that he was going to do it in the training center, a vast space with nothing but an empty mat filling it in the middle and lockers and glorified closets around it. In reality, it was not so much a room than it was an entire floor dedicated to the art of fighting. 

Baze stood by the shutting lift doors to acquaint himself to his new playground. Then he tossed his emaciated gym bag to land in a heap next to one of the steel cabinets and stripped off his shoes. 

Before long, he was padding to the center of the massive room where the light was the brightest, twirling a hanbo stick first to tap one shoulder and then to hover just half an inch off the mat. He relished the feel of the staff’s smooth surface, its simple design which somehow encouraged his muscles to work. After the Tokyo Shatterdome was decommissioned, he’d had to stick with a cheap shinai and be careful he didn’t break all his things in his humble apartment. 

Now he had all the floor area he could ask for—he could whirl, he could swing. Baze felt adventurous, easing out of his normal routine to settle for something more vigorous, more proper for a ranger than an engineer. 

He remembered them all—the low arches, the jumps, which points needed him to hold his breath or exhale with a, “Ha!” How and when to fold his fingers into a fist when he punched. Heat built up around him—he thought of himself suddenly like a well-oiled machine with an engine all warmed up—and traces of sweat drew lines down the sides of his face, the back of his neck, the pits of his arms, his chest, his back. 

He was coming up to the end of his first set. One half-turn left, one downward strike and he was done. 

The second one apparently stood waiting for him by the lift doors shut tight, a smile on his face. 

Baze took three counts to steady his breath, and another three to bring himself up to stand straight, all the while watching his visitor nod and tap his walking stick, his personal hanbo stick on the mat like an applause of sorts. 

“You know, the great thing about learning to teach Jaeger Bushido blind is that,” Chirrut grinned, “I no longer need my eyes to watch you fight.”

“That uh…” Baze panted softly, raising his drenched shirt to wipe his face with the bottom part of it. “That sounds distinctly like the definition of a peeping tom.” That made Chirrut laugh. Baze smiled. “Did I interrupt you, Master?”

“On the contrary, it was _I_ who interrupted you, _Apprentice_.” He snorted at his own joke. Chirrut started tapping his stick in a faster rhythm as he approached the lockers to his side and found Baze’s stuff by the tip of his foot. He tossed his own bag there, going down to one knee to undo his gym shoes. “You’re finished?” he asked the locker. 

“Yeah, I’m done, I’m just about to go, actually,” Baze lied, starting for his pack. 

“Actually, please stay,” Chirrut said. Baze stopped when the other man straightened up and pushed his shoes with his bare foot to park them nicely against the wall. “This is too much space for one person.”

Baze crossed his arms and smirked. “You just want to point out all the mistakes I made.”

“I could teach you a lesson if you need one,” Chirrut said, winking at him. Baze laughed. He beamed at his reaction, pulled up his shirt and started to strip. 

That part, Baze did not expect at all. And what to make of it, if he had to do something in response, he didn’t know. He couldn’t tell Chirrut to stop—he had no right, there was no reason…and he couldn’t want him to. He might have something to say if his tongue hadn’t betrayed him and _wouldn’t_ betray him if he tried. If he moved, it would only be towards him, and he didn’t want to know what his hands might want to feel, to touch. 

Stranded by his absent decisions, Baze was left to watch. He felt obscene; he wondered if this was what it felt like to observe someone through their window, in their private moment without their knowing. Chirrut stretched his arms up to slip his shirt off and Baze swore he could draw every line of muscle flexing under his skin. If someone had asked him, he would have been able to describe the careful curves of his ribs to his waist, and out again from his waist to his hips where his trousers embraced him just where it began. He knew he would see this again behind closed eyes—the flat of his stomach, the arch of his back, the frame of his shoulders, his chest when he breathed. 

The branded scars trailing along his right side, lines tracing the circuitry of a Drivesuit. A memento from three years back, something gained from something lost. Baze imagined it felt like a hot needle carving the lines onto flesh. He imagined it welting, peeling, itching and burning. Sensitive and sore where it touched. 

Chirrut dropped his shirt to his bag. Looking over his shoulder, he smiled a cat’s smile. “What are you staring at?” he purred. 

Baze glared at Chirrut. “Was that really necessary?” he asked. His voice sounded strange. 

“You mean the question or the stripping?” Baze groaned. Chirrut laughed. “You need to lighten up sometimes, Baze Malbus! The world is already too dark as it is.” He rolled his foot on his hanbo stick on the floor, kicked it up and snatched it in the air. 

Baze almost forgot that he was blind. “I reckon that wasn’t my fault,” he said, half-mumbling, following Chirrut to the center of the mat where he assumed one of the beginning poses of Jaeger Bushido. 

“If we only care about fixing our own problems, where would that put us, hm?’ Chirrut asked, like the true teacher that he was. He spread his feet wide apart and bent his knees to bring him closer to his center, staff held at a diagonal angle to his left with one hand. “And where does that put you? You who left but came back to the front.”

There was no real answer to that. “Apparently,” Baze said anyway, readjusting his grip around his weapon, “it’s at the opposite end of a training master.” Because there was just something wrong about letting Chirrut get away without a fight. 

Chirrut smirked at his attempt. “I am more than that,” he said. 

Their staves cracked onto each other’s, like a bone snapping in two, before Baze realized that Chirrut had begun and had meant to draw first blood. Every other thought had come tumbling into his mind after that: what was he thinking? Wasn’t this only supposed to be a friendly spar? Why would he think that a Kwoon training master would go easy on him on a friendly spar when Kwoon training masters were molded to make you question your right to live? That he’d managed to hold onto his staff and still protect his nose could only have come from a miracle. He stepped back, chasing himself and his defenses. He had run out of miracles now, he thought. 

But Chirrut whirled and swung again and his arms raised his staff overhead, and then he was still alive. Chirrut threw a kick and Baze’s foot pulled him back with another step, dodging the attack to his ribs, and then his hands were striking his staff forward for a jab that missed the training master by a generous hair. 

He went after him and blocked another cut that would have taken his head. Intuition and muscle memory had saved him thus far, and perhaps a bit of luck that was bound to run out before the fight was over. It was just a question of how much time Chirrut would give him, how long he could keep up with his lightning fast strikes and thrusts. Chirrut had always been a brutal fighter, and it seemed like blindness and age had only made him worse—where Baze only clung to his instincts to keep him alive one second longer, Chirrut had become the master of it. He was jumping back before Baze had even thought to pierce his left side, whirling before Baze had even caught his balance, timing an angry swing right before Baze could take a second to breathe. He had the man at the palm of his hand, in more ways than one now. 

Baze would never have imagined that he would soon find a method in Chirrut’s madness in spite of all that. At the end of the day after all, all they were doing was trading forms, mixing and switching, twisting what they had learned by rote to survive the next crack of wood and then the next. It was like mathematics, where one always began with the simple equations and then mixed them up to come up with something more complex. This was how Baze read Chirrut’s patterns, predicted his moves and then responded, breaking his attacks, slipping between his defenses to force him back to a corner. And then Chirrut would shift his style, and then they would do it all over again. 

They went back and forth, filling the entire mat with their wild swings, their tight spins, their tumbles and their cries. He never felt the strain in his muscles as he bore Chirrut’s downward slam, the weight in his bones when he shoved him back and chased after his stumbling form. It was only after the elevator gave a happy chime and what felt like the entirety of the PPDC had come pouring in that it occurred to him that such aches were possible. Chirrut had made a dive for him when that happened, and he’d fallen back to the mat to throw Chirrut off with a kick. Chirrut landed in a roll and was on his feet again before Baze had brought himself up to his fullest height. 

And then Bodhi was bursting between them with his hands out, crying, “Stop, stop!!” Cassian flew to Chirrut’s corner while Jyn got ready to fight Baze in case he ever tried to get past them, assuming he could get over his confusion. He and Chirrut had just been sparring, what was going on? How did they know where to find them? 

“Kay?” he asked the man who was doubled over, chasing his breath. Even Mothma had come to join them, but her attention was on another side of the room. 

“We saw you,” he heaved, “having it out with each other from the security room. We thought you were really trying to kill each other! For some reason.”

“Kay, it was just a spar, no one was going to get killed.” Baze looked at Jyn who looked back at him as if she was hoping he was lying and she hadn’t just wasted her energy rushing to break up something that was never there. “Hey, you nearly killed Cassian and no one tried to stop you from doing that.”

“For a friendly match, you’ve quite overextended yourself, haven’t you, Master Imwe?”

Mothma’s question received only silence in response. Everyone had suddenly forgotten about Baze and Chirrut’s death match, turning as one to look at the immovable commander. Baze was almost surprised to hear the familiar tap of a hanbo stick on the mat. 

Chirrut stood with his shoulders squared, hands resting at the top of his walking stick, as if he hadn’t just almost murdered Baze or Baze hadn’t just tried to break his neck more than once. The room was suddenly too quiet for his comfort. His ears still rang with the noise of cracking wood, feet on the mat, their cries answering to the other’s. “I had a point to make,” was his only reply. 

“You’ve made your point,” Mothma replied, “but that is all that I can say about it.”

“But you’ve seen it, haven’t you?” Chirrut chased after her, taking a step forward. “All of you,” he said, sweeping his blind gaze to the rest of the room. 

Facing Mothma again, Chirrut said finally, “He’s my co-pilot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Used the prompt _“What are you staring at?”_ (dk how that is seasonal) as part of the spring challenge, to be collated in a series of spring prompts called the _Baze & Chirrut Spring Collection_. (spring sprung sprong)


	5. Chapter 5

Baze Malbus and Jed Malbus were not Drift Compatible. 

The reverse of it had been the one thing that Baze had built his entire career on—they were twins, they had known each other their entire life, their quirks and what made them tick—and in one fell swoop, the foundation had all come crumbling down. 

He’d watched his hanbo stick strike the mat as it fell, bouncing once before it landed again, rolling farther from his reach. He’d seen it all on his elbows and his back, too stunned by his easy defeat, and how swiftly his plan had backfired on him. The count had been 3-0 in favor of him when he’d decided to slow down and give his twin a chance to catch up. As co-pilots, one should never win over the other, but Jed didn’t think so. He believed in the integrity of the system. He believed that either you were or you weren’t. You could or you couldn’t. 

Jed had left Baze on the mat with the look of disappointment. The count was 5-3 in favor of him. The next time they spoke again, a whole night had passed. That was the same evening Baze had drawn the line and announced his decision to step out of the program and join the engineers. 

“You’re serious?” Jed asked, whirling at him. They stood by the balcony of the Jaeger Academy overlooking the cold, dark Pacific Ocean. 

Baze nodded without looking at him. “There’s nothing in it for me anymore. I can’t be co-pilots with anyone else.”

“But what about Chirrut?”

“Chirrut would murder me before I even get a chance to swing at the air around him,” Baze chuckled. “Or if he doesn’t, the mod ref would.”

“You think Chirrut cares? The guy barely has any shred of modesty on him, much less a modesty reflex.”

“He doesn’t,” Baze began. Pointing to himself, he added, “I do.”

Jed shook his head, facing out to the ocean again. After a long minute, he said, “We’re up for a match. Tomorrow, 6am.”

Now Baze was the one who whirled at his twin. “You’re serious?” he’d asked and Jed nodded. 

“Will you come to watch?” he asked. They’d been twins, after all—brothers before they became trainees and opponents. 

Baze had no reason to decline the invitation, even if he might have wanted to. So he’d shrugged, and nodded, and said, “Yeah, you’ll need someone to cheer you up when Chirrut kicks your ass.” Jed had groaned and punched Baze’s arm for his amazing show of faith. Baze had laughed.

⚠

The fire exit door leading out the back of the ziggurat had been caught between squealing, creaking and groaning when Baze smashed the panic bar down and shoved the whole thing flying open by the sheer force of him. “What the hell was that, Chirrut?” he snarled, whirling at the blind man stumbling after him just as the door banged against the outer wall. Chirrut hadn’t jumped, hadn’t even flinched and looked smaller. If anything, the loud noise had only served to annoy him and that had only made Baze angrier. “What. The _hell_ were you thinking?!”

“I thought I’d give you a chance to fulfill your childhood dreams,” Chirrut said. 

“Do you think this is a joke?!” Baze had barely kept himself from shouting and waking up half the kaiju populace and the jaegers to boot sleeping under their feet. He couldn’t believe Chirrut’s gall, the haughty tone of his voice. He wasn’t even remotely _sorry_. “Did I ever give you the impression that I was playing games with you?”

“If you did, I would have taken you _much_ less seriously.”

“ _You! Set me up!! _” Baze roared, the black-blue night repeating his rage back to him in frightened echoes. “You’d challenged me with the intention of testing our compatibility all along! You knew that Mothma and everyone would be watching!”__

__“You’re right—I admit the first of that,” Finally, Chirrut confessed, frowning darkly. Next to Baze, spoken in the dark, his voice was quiet but sharp. If it sang, it sang only in angry notes. “But the second is not true. That was a risk I never considered, I only wanted to test the first!”_ _

__“You really think I would believe that, do you?” Baze snarled, taking one step towards Chirrut who stood his ground. His fingers tightened around his staff. “Mothma walked in, and you didn’t miss a beat. Where were you before you trapped me in the training room, hm? Did you catch me in the security cameras? Were you waiting for me to go back all this time!”_ _

__“Maybe if I hadn’t been so _blind_ , I might have been half as smart as you and done just that!” Chirrut snapped, glaring at Baze’s thick arm, face twisting at the accusation, a look of revolt on him. Baze couldn’t tell if it was the darkness or the tension that made him look pale so suddenly but then, he’d been too upset to care. “But I am, and so I’m not! You’re not the only one who seeks comfort in the emptiness of the training room, Baze. I have done the same since I left Tokyo. Now would you blame me for sharing a habit of yours?”_ _

__“That doesn’t absolve you, Chirrut,” Baze said, shaking his head. “You set me up. You orchestrated all this! Did you even consider the idea of asking me first before you attacked?”_ _

__“Like a marriage proposal?” Chirrut laughed bitterly. “You would have said no.”_ _

__“How would you know?” Baze growled, glowering. “You’re not in my head. We’re not co-pilots!”_ _

__“But we could be if you wanted it.”_ _

__Baze stared at Chirrut in surprise, utterly speechless. The man simply would not give up, shame be damned! “Chirrut,” he began at a loss, shaking his head in disbelief, “I’m not a ranger!”_ _

__“I thought so,” Chirrut said._ _

__Baze couldn’t say what had shocked him more—Chirrut’s callousness or the fact that he was right. That Baze would say no. Baze had fallen for his trap. Again. Chirrut smirked suddenly, lacking humor, and Baze felt infuriated._ _

__“And that gives you permission to take advantage of our friendship, doesn’t it?” he asked, seething with the heat in his chest. His words were slow and patient, to better carry the poison through his tongue. The effect was immediate: he saw Chirrut’s blind eyes open wide with surprise and the stunned protest on his face. “I had been so happy to see you again, Chirrut. Now I know what it had all been for.”_ _

__“Baze, wait.”_ _

__He shook his head, keenly aware that Chirrut would not see it. So let him keep guessing, he thought, as he turned round his heels and started back to their apartments._ _

__“Baze?” He heard Chirrut calling behind him, could practically hear him gripping his hanbo stick tighter still. “Baze!” he called again but still, he refused to answer._ _

__He left Chirrut in that state, out in the dark on his own._ _

____

⚠

In the end, he realized that that had been the reason why Chirrut had hurt him—because Chirrut had only valued their relationship because of what he could gain from it.

Nothing could be further from the truth—he knew this the same way he had known Chirrut far longer than he had lost his twin but that didn’t change the fact that Chirrut had attacked him and blindsided him. That was not something that friends did to one another. 

His door slammed home and the locks clicked into place. Baze flung his bag to the corner after, pulled off his cold, damp shirt, balled it up and pitched it at another corner of his room. He wanted to scream if he wasn’t just so conscious of how the sound would carry through the walls so he just growled and snarled like an animal, raking his fingers down his loosened hair, ripping his tie off and throwing _that_ , as well. Curled locks cascaded messily down his shoulders as he paced his room, fists on his sides. He glared at the floor beneath his feet but his mind was still trapped in the training room. 

In the LOCCENT. 

In the corridor, and in the landing pad. All these places in particular, only because these had been where Chirrut had smiled at him, had put his hand on his heart. Had held his hand and had betrayed him ultimately. He couldn’t accept that there had only been one man behind all of them. Perhaps if it had been someone different, someone else other than his Chirrut, he might have been less surprised, in the same way he would have expected less of them. Chirrut could be stubborn, sometimes even foolhardy—but never for selfish reasons. 

Slowly, he stopped, like a spinning top winding down. He stood facing the lone writing desk he’d been provided, which he’d left barren for the most part except for a few essentials, some personal effects. His watch, sunglasses, an old brush with a cracked handle. The tin replica of the old jaeger Ruby Force stood proudly in the center near the plain wall, and next to it, a stack of photos, some with tapes still folded over the sides. 

He hadn’t yet made a decision what he wanted to do with them. Put them up on the wall as he once did, toss them in a box, file them in an album. Until then, he kept them out where he could see them. Like a reminder—both of what he had yet to do and what he had done in the past. 

The one on top had been taken on a birthday celebration in the mess hall, not long before he’d lost his brother. He sat with him on the picture, both of them accompanied by a bottle each although Baze had been the only one using it as a shield against a party horn with its tongue out to him. And at the other end of the toy was no other than the celebrant himself, Chirrut Imwe, donned no less in a bright green party hat. 

Figures that it had been another piece from the set he’d received from Chirrut when he left. Baze couldn’t stop his hand from reaching it, this reminder of the Chirrut that he knew—so unlike the one he had met now in the training room, with his past and his ambitions. Could he get him back again, he wondered. He wanted this one that hadn’t hurt him yet. 

He’d almost asked the question out loud when he heard the timid knocks on his door. He knew who it was even before he approached and looked through the peep hole. He wasn’t even surprised anymore when his first instinct was to reach for the doorknob when he saw the shape of Chirrut’s head, and then when he saw the look on his face which reminded him, as it often did, of a child. It was impassive for the most part, but because Chirrut was always smiling, it became obvious when concern knitted his brows together, and his lips were parted open just so with unspoken words lined up behind them. Baze felt as if he knew what he meant to say even before he heard the first word of it, and it made him tighten his grip around the handle. 

But that was all he did. He stood and watched his visitor through the tiny glass in silence, otherwise, pressing his weight quietly on his side of the door. Out in the corridor, Chirrut retrieved his hand and piled it carefully at the top of his staff, squaring his shoulders and raising his chin. He was always careful about his pride and his dignity, and Baze felt he was doubly so now after he had gotten blind. He should never look in need, or piteous. 

When Baze refused to give, he didn’t even try to knock again and simply nodded his head. As if he knew Baze was on the other side, and he was telling him, _You don’t have to answer. I understand._ Baze watched him tap his staff once, then turn and start towards the opposite door leading to his own bedroom. 

After Chirrut had pulled the door shut, he let go of the lock. That was the only time he allowed himself to wish, just for a heartbeat, that he had opened the door for his friend.

⚠

“So what happened?” Bodhi asked.

Just then, a scream had hailed from the high ceiling and sent both Bodhi and Baze diving under their arms out of instinct. There was a second of silence, and then the sharp ringing noise of metal, like shattering glass, meeting concrete after a fall from a hundred feet. 

“Duì bù qǐ!” 

“Ei!” Kay was the first to yell a response to the apology. Baze could see him wagging his finger at someone up the catwalk as he demanded, “Nǐ zhè shì gàn shén me?!” He thought his tones still needed work but otherwise, the Caucasian man had gotten the emotion down perfectly. 

Others echoed the officer’s indignation with their own versions of _what the hell are you doing_. Baze resurfaced carefully as Kay marched past him, and the clumsy engineer overhead repeated his apologies. Bodhi sprung up after him, swinging left then right, looking past and over his right shoulder, mumbling something incomprehensible the entire time. Baze couldn’t hear it past the din of the maintenance bay getting back to the program. 

“Hey,” Baze beckoned to him gently. He reached past discarded paper bowls and bottles of tea to clasp him by his left arm while Bodhi was still addressing the ghost at his right. “ _Hey,_ ” he tried again. Bodhi whipped his attention back to him with the eyes of a man who had indeed seen a ghost, but Baze figured that ghost was him and Bodhi had forgotten what they were doing down there with the jaegers. 

He sighed, which naturally came out like a quiet snarl but that was just him. “There’s nothing more to tell, Bodhi,” he continued, as if nothing had happened, trying to pull the pilot back to reality. “He challenged me to a friendly match but I never knew it was a compatibility test. I only found out just when you did.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, seemingly returning to himself. “That’s…I guess that’s not good.”

Baze eyed him with a light frown. _Tell me about it,_ was the message. “Neither of us was happy. I confronted him about it last night, outside the ziggurat.”

“Yeah, he, he told me when we met,” Bodhi said. 

It was obvious that Bodhi had only meant to share in complete honesty, but Baze still took it in surprise, as if he hadn’t expected Chirrut— _Chirrut_ , of all people—to have any friends aside from him. “You spoke with him?” he spat suddenly, eyes round. 

Bodhi nodded. “We met in the mess hall,” he said, gathering his legs to cross them over the pair of benches they shared, careful not to upset the disposable chopsticks rested atop the empty bowls. “It was just this morning. He, he asked to sit with me. He said…” He rubbed his fingers briefly in thought. “His lunch mate?” Bodhi continued. “He said he couldn’t find him.”

That was because his lunch mate, Baze almost said, was hiding from him behind work. “What else did he say?” he asked, more gently this time. 

He almost jumped when Kay had come barking in with a loud, “Some people, honestly!!” The technician was practically fuming when he came to stand beside the startled pilot and his engineer, hands on his sides, one of them folded over a datapad. “Can’t believe a guy like that made it through first grade if he can’t read _safety first_. I know the PPDC’s fallen into all sorts of disrepair but I didn’t think it would have fallen _this_ low.”

Even though Kay wasn’t looking, Baze shrugged. 

Kay turned to him suddenly. “You all right, then?”

Baze shrugged again. “Still alive,” he answered. 

“Find that hard to believe myself,” Kay said, crouching low. “I mean I’ve seen Chirrut fight in and out of a jaeger but even a kaiju would have run with their tail between their legs if he came at them like that. Shame it was you at the other end of his stick.”

Baze smirked. “Just my luck, I guess.”

“So what the hell happened, anyway?” Kay nodded to the jaeger behind them. “You’re not Rogue’s team but I haven’t seen you step out of the bay since this morning.”

Baze wondered suddenly where Chirrut was, if he was walking down hallways, trying to find him behind one of those doors. 

He cleared the thought off his head, squaring his shoulders in a conscious effort to forget it. For an instant there, he felt a distinct urgency to bolt out of the jaeger bay and seek out Chirrut. He never wanted to see the man as he imagined him ever again. “Just my luck, I guess,” he said again. It was just his luck to be someone’s type for a replacement co-pilot, that is. “The extra money’s good for my doomsday funds.” Kay snorted, rising. “I heard that her final check was being accelerated besides. So is it true, then? Her pilots are arriving.”

“If things go to plan, we’ll meet them before tomorrow and the world end,” Kay said, raising the datapad. “They’re all right here. All twelve of them.” 

“Is that where the fate of mankind lies now?” At the corner of his eye, he saw Bodhi rising briefly, hand up to reach for the pad until he stopped himself midway, like catching himself suddenly. He fell back to himself in a snap. Neither Baze nor Kay chose to comment on it for his sake. “How much longer have we got to polish her up?” he asked, nodding back to Rogue Alpha. 

“You’ve got less than 48 hours, that’s for sure,” Kay said, returning his hands to his hips. “You know how it is here. Things don’t get finished, they just get released.”

“Roger that,” Baze chuckled. 

Kay shrugged. “Okay, back to work both of you. Baze, check the wings, make sure they don’t fall off. We wouldn’t want the kaiju laughing at us. Bodhi, take over. I need to look for the commander now.”

“Y, yes, sir!” Bodhi saluted. 

Kay left them soon after. Bodhi started to stack their empty paper dishes before Baze stopped him with a hurried question, “So what else did he say?”

Bodhi looked back to him with round eyes, snapping to attention. “Umm…h, he said…to get back to work? Um…check the wings, check the auxiliary blades, the ribbon, the sliding gears…”

“I don’t mean that,” Baze sighed, barely avoiding scratching his head, although now that Bodhi had given him a checklist, he would be sure to look into them. “I mean Chirrut. You had lunch with him. What else did he say?”

“Oh! Him.” Bodhi laughed briefly, and then he became quiet, eyes, smile and shoulders falling. He waved the plastic lid he held like a fan as he chewed on his lips. 

When he looked up to him again, Baze was surprised to note that his eyes were brown. “He didn’t really say anything about…about what happened,” Bodhi began. “We talked about Rogue Alpha, about Mum.”

“Did he talk about Jed? His co-pilot.”

Bodhi shook his head. “We also talked about traveling. He, he’s never been to the UK, I’ve…” He shrugged. “I’ve never been to Macau.”

Chirrut was avoiding the match, and anything remotely connected to it. Baze didn’t know what he ought to feel about this. He only knew that somehow, relief was one of them, and he felt guilty because of it. Because it felt like he couldn’t accept Chirrut for who he was except for who Baze wanted him to be. 

“He mm…he also asked about you,” Bodhi said. 

Baze snapped out of his thoughts then to face the pilot. “He did? What did he say?”

“Just asked me if I’d seen you, that’s all,” Bodhi said. “He, he said that…he heard that they would be serving gyoza? Later? He said it was your favorite…”

Despite himself, Baze started to smile. And he shrugged, saying, “They’re good.”

“Yeah, they are!” Bodhi agreed, his face shining briefly at their shared interests. Like a flash, it was gone, and he was gazing contemplatively at their former lunch again. “I think…” He faced Baze again. “I think that he’s really sorry, Baze. For what happened. You know, losing a co-pilot,” Bodhi laughed briefly and quietly, “it’s…no one likes it to happen, it’s no one’s fault.” He raised his shrugged again and shook his head. Baze couldn’t believe that that was the only time he truly made the connection: both Chirrut and Bodhi had lost their co-pilots in battle. Bodhi’s own skin may be branded by the overheating circuitry of the Drivesuit when he carried on the fight on his own. 

“I mean, at least not…” Bodhi’s hand moved between the two of them, then swept out to the team crawling like ants all over the jaeger Rogue Alpha. “Not our side. Them, I mean. The kaiju, it’s their fault.” He put his hands together in prayer when he said quietly to Baze, “If you have to blame someone, it’s them. Don’t blame us.”

_Don’t blame Chirrut,_ those hands seemed to beg him. _He never wanted to lose Jed._ And Baze believed them. He heard Chirrut’s cries in the clinic after he awoke from his coma, felt the impact of his loss when Chirrut left. He wasn’t the only one who grieved—but maybe Chirrut was the only one grieving now. 

“Didn’t you ever want to get a new co-pilot?” Baze asked. He nodded his head towards the jaeger again. “Get back in there?”

“What—me?” Bodhi laughed. “N, no, I…I can’t go back in there, I can’t…” He jutted his thumbs towards the proud jaeger but froze in mid-motion, like he remembered something from Baze’s face. “Galen Erso? Y, you know, the J-Tech expert?”

“Jyn Erso’s father,” Baze confirmed, nodding. 

“He, he said I can’t get back in there anymore. I, i, it would be too dangerous for me,” Bodhi pressed his hands to his chest, “and for my co-pilot. Mum…” He tapped his temple. “She’s still in here. I hear her everyday. I wake up and it’s like she’s in the room beside me, waking _me_ up.”

“So why are you still here?” Baze asked, shaking his head. “I don’t understand it. You lost your mother in something traumatic. If you look at Rogue,” he tossed his hand to the gleaming sentinel, now complete, “don’t you remember her? Don’t you remember her…” Screams. “Her voice? What happened to her?”

“That’s how memories are,” Bodhi said, shrugging. “They’ll always be there, no matter what. Y, you’ll just have to live with them. And Mum,” his thumb directed itself to the jaeger again, “she always believed in this fight. She said that…we could make it right. W, we just have to be brave enough. To do something about it. So I’m still here. I can’t go back in there anymore?” He pointed to the jaeger again. “But I can do something else to help.”

⚠

That night, he slept looking up to the jaeger behind grilled windows, in one of those sheds in the maintenance bay that doubled up into literally anything the engineers could think of. He slept with the image of Rogue Alpha imprinted behind his eyes with Bodhi’s words echoing in his head. _We just have to be brave enough to do something about it,_ he’d said. _So I’m still here. I can do something else to help._

That had been Baze as well, when he decided to become an engineer. He’d always thought that that was Chirrut, too, when he became a training master. Turns out he might have been wrong all this time…

When he came to, he was still on the mat, where his brother had left him. Unseen faces peered at him from the boundaries of the room, and he was all alone there in the middle, splayed and defeated. 

“Baze!”

Just like before, Chirrut had come running to him, falling to his side, a look of urgency in his face. “Baze,” he said again, in an echo that seemed to fill the entire room. His movements lagged, as if he was a video playing in slow-motion. “Baze, are you okay? Baze…”

_Just keep saying my name,_ he said. 

“Baze,” Chirrut repeated. He looked back over his shoulder, as though he might be able to call Jed back for an apology but the man was gone. So he turned to face Baze again, reaching to take his cheek lightly. “Baze…”

Baze felt happy. He smiled slightly when he raised his own hand to Chirrut’s own cheek, his thumb stroking the corner of the man’s lips. Chirrut smiled back in response, pressing his face into the span of Baze’s hand. In the darkness of the forest at night, his eyes seem to glow a brilliant blue. 

“Baze, wait.”

“Baze?”

“Baze!”

⚠

After a quick shower, he was back in the training room, far sooner than he expected. It was the first time in a long while that he was in a ranger’s den during daytime, although it was still too early for the sun to truly warm the skies.

Baze began his routine as before with easy slashes going down from his shoulder to his feet and back again. And as before, the elevator gave a pleasant chime as it opened its doors. 

And Chirrut stepped out. 

They stood as if they could both see each other, frozen in place, in some sort of suspense. Baze wondered if Chirrut couldn’t believe his luck, even though he had a bag over his shoulder which he took to mean that he hadn’t come there looking for Baze. 

The doors slid close. Chirrut stood with his hands atop his staff. 

At a loss of what to say, Baze waved. 

After what seemed like a century, Chirrut finally shrugged off his pack and left it where it fell on the floor. He forced his feet out of his shoes, kicked them back and marched forward, onto the mat. One part of Baze screamed for him to tense up, to prepare to parry whatever it was that Chirrut was going to throw at him—but he didn’t. 

Chirrut raised his staff to the level of their chins, and when he stopped walking, he set it down next to his feet, and rose without it. Chirrut had unarmed himself. 

Baze nodded in understanding, then flung his staff far, letting it land in a heap of bouncing noises, the better for Chirrut to hear his own imitation. Chirrut smiled for that, and Baze felt the same shape tracing itself on his face. 

“Was all that necessary?” he asked, finally. 

“It was, to me,” Chirrut answered. “Although I admit, I normally have more sense in my brain than I did that night.” He bowed his head slightly. “I’m sorry. I should never have attacked you like that.” When he straightened up again, he added, “Apparently, blind men can still be shortsighted.” Baze chuckled, and he grinned. 

“But it’s true?” Baze continued, crossing his arms, getting comfortable in front of the man who stood as if the faith of the human race lied in the straightness of his posture. “You really saw me as your co-pilot? You know I’m not a ranger, Chirrut.”

“These days, does it all still even matter?” Chirrut arched his brows. “A priest could become a firefighter if their survival comes down to it. A librarian may become a nurse if a life depended on it. I’ve thought about it a lot, although I can’t say how long now. I’d really meant to ask you if you wanted to be my co-pilot after we fought, but I blew it all when the commander asked me a direct question. I thought…that was my chance. It was an opportunity for me to show her what I’d been trying to tell her all this time.”

“I overheard you and the commander talking in her office, the day we fought.”

“That was one such discussion we were having.” Chirrut smiled. “Not as fruitful as you can see.”

Baze laughed again, shaking his head. With a toss of his hand, he asked, “So did anything change? Do you still want me as your co-pilot?”

Chirrut frowned suddenly. “Would you hate me for it, Baze Malbus?” he whispered. 

Baze contemplated the question for a long minute. “I don’t know,” he confessed eventually, and that was the truth of the matter. “Right now, all I know is that I’m glad we’re talking again.”

“As am I,” Chirrut said happily. 

“But why me?” Baze asked. “Because I’m Jed’s twin? Because I sound like him? I’ve never been in a jaeger to drive it, much less fight in it. All I know about the 52 forms is for exercise. You don’t even know for sure if we’re Drift Compatible.”

“We don’t even know if we can save the planet, yet what are we doing here?” Chirrut argued back. “Why don’t we all just go back home, hug our families and count the days?”

Chirrut, as always, had a valid point, which left Baze speechless. He was reminded suddenly that the man had once told him to have faith. 

“Do you ever wonder where your brother is right now?”

“Jed?” Baze shook his head. “He’s dead.”

“But can you really be _sure_ of it?” Chirrut’s lips had tightened just the slightest, but Baze had caught him clenching his fists, as he might have around his staff. “We didn’t find his corpse. Where did you last see him?”

“On the bridge, entering the Conn-Pod.”

“Didn’t you ever wonder if he was just hiding behind the door? If he escaped and all that happened was just a farce he and I put together to cover his tracks? To let him live his own life, away from the war?”

“Chirrut, what are you talking about?”

“That’s how it feels to me,” Chirrut said. “Before he died, he went out of alignment and I became blind. Permanently. Everyone tells me he’s dead but there are days, still, that I don’t know if I believe them. I never felt Jed die, Baze, I never heard him scream. Our connection snapped before any of that could be fed through the bridge. Some days, I wonder if he’s still around, watching me from the corner of my room, across the window. I call out but he doesn’t answer, I wait for someone to finally tell me the joke but no one does.”

Baze could read it on his face, his uncertainty, his insecurity. The weight of both had caused his features to crumple, but he hadn’t yet made the connection between them and the heaviness of his heart. 

“Do you know the last thing I heard from him before he left me?”

“No,” Baze said, although he’d always wanted to know. “What is it?”

“Baze.”

“What?”

“That was it,” Chirrut said, laughing suddenly. “His last thought, it was your name. Baze.”

Baze heard it, but couldn’t let it sink in just yet; he was incapable of it. Jed was thinking of him in his last moment on Earth. Baze couldn’t believe it. It was not the way he knew and remembered his twin to behave, at all. 

“He said, Baze, and then he was gone. Our line was gone. Three years later, I still don’t know what he meant,” Chirrut continued. “If he just remembered you suddenly, if he meant for me to look after you, if he saved me because of you…” His brows wrinkled together. “Do you?”

“Chirrut,” Baze said, “this is the first time I’ve ever heard of that.” His stunned reminder seemed to have caused the other man to pause suddenly. 

“Of course,” Chirrut said, and nodded when he could move again. “Once more, I’m sorry.”

“Stop it,” Baze sighed, shuffling towards Chirrut to catch his shoulder. “Stop apologizing. It’s not your fault, you never wanted to be placed in this situation.” He earned a shy, hesitant smile for that, but it was enough to make Baze’s heart swell to fullness. He smirked. “Seems to me you’ve got a head full of noise that needs to shut up.” He reached down, to the staff on the mat. 

“How would you know?” Chirrut snapped back gently. “You’re not my co-pilot.”

“Trust me,” Baze chuckled, handing Chirrut his staff. “Just have faith in me.” Chirrut grinned at his words, and he grinned back. “Best of five.”

“Just try not to rip my arms off their sockets this time, okay?” Chirrut called to him as he went for his own staff across the room, sliding his feet apart. 

“You’re one to talk,” Baze cackled. 

“With arms as big as yours?” Chirrut retaliated. “Come on, Baze, you’re not blind.”

“I’m starting to think you’re not either,” Baze laughed, tossing his hanbo stick in the air to catch it in a twirl. He spun to face Chirrut, spreading his legs, holding out his weapon in guard position. He started, slowly, to count to three before he would charge forward. 

At the last number, the lights went dark suddenly. When they came back on again, they were flashing red.


	6. Chapter 6

It was another Category IV, as all kaiju tended to be this late. Codenamed Dorobou because of how the bogie appeared suddenly in their sensors, like a thief in the night. Heading for Okinawa. 

They’d kept to the back of the LOCCENT during the briefing as they once had. The usual suspects were there upfront, near the main terminals. Kay ran the show and kept it short and sweet; time was running out and things were moving fast. 

Before the rangers crossed them en route to the lift, Baze chased after Jyn with a quiet, “Good luck, little sister.” She responded with a smile that was both haughty and grateful. 

They listened to the rest of the deployment standing side-by-side each other, arms crossed (hands on his staff for Chirrut), staying near the darkness where they were invisible. The jaeger was on air and would intercept the kaiju at the East China Sea, before it got too far and too close for comfort. 

When Mothma glanced over her shoulder, Baze avoided her gaze and redirected his attention to the younger man next to him. 

“Something the matter, Baze?”

“Just the commander,” he grumbled in response to his chipper question, shifting on his feet as he inspected his shoes which were black in the shadows. “She’s looking at us.”

“We make quite the sight!”

“For sore eyes, maybe,” Baze groaned. 

“ _LOCCENT, we’re coming to position,_ ” Jyn reported over the radio. “ _We’ve got the bogie in sight._ ”

“ _The bastard’s moving fast, too,_ ” Cassian snarled. “ _Disengaging cables now._ ”

It seemed to Baze that the entire LOCCENT had lurched forward in anticipation of the fight to come, and him with them with a step forward. Some invisible gear shifted, and a liquid tension, thick like molasses, filled the room, setting it ablaze with the sound of scanners and graphs peaking and beeping like a heartbeat. On the main screen, Rebel Hope fell to the sea with a great splash, elbows out and knees folding to carry its weight and its balance. The colors of the LOCCENT shifted to sync with the jaeger’s battle status. 

“Rebels,” Kay beckoned urgently, “mind your position, the kaiju’s coming straight for you!”

The warning was futile; the splash had barely subsided before the slithering form of the kaiju burst through the surface with a mad roar and a claw raised. Rebel had barely gotten her bearings back before it was crashing on their blocking forearm, the pain shooting through Jyn who yelled. The kaiju had drawn first blood. Baze felt sick. 

The rest of it was shaped like a bald tail-less lizard with a too-narrow head, too-long sets of claws and far too many teeth in and out of its expansive jaw for comfort. Baze thought it was about as human as a kaiju could get, with hard sinews to cushion its bones, and it fought like one, too—an inconvenient reminder of what sort of demons hell was sending for them. 

One webbed fist flew and then the other, diminishing Rebel Hope’s chances to retaliate while it kept them on the defensive. Several lights and beeps erupted in the LOCCENT for every pound the jaeger took. All they seemed to hear was the repetitive crash of meat on metal. 

“Rebels, get that thing off your hide!!”

“ _We’re doing something, okay?! We’re doing something!!_ ” Cassian screamed back to Kay. 

“Get Hong Kong on standby,” Mothma said stoically amidst the chaos. 

“Roger that!” Kay’s fingers flew in obedience. The battle was some distance still from them but Baze felt like he had difficulty hearing Kay past the banging, screaming noises coming from the radio. 

He felt ill at ease when it all suddenly stopped. The battered jaeger lurched forward, like junk tipping over to the side of the kaiju, much to everyone’s alarm. Kay had grabbed the mic and yelled out for the crew and it was as if that was what had revived them. 

In a stunning twist, Rebel Hope had recovered herself, coming up at the other side of the bewildered kaiju. Baze found out too late what their plan had been all along and by then, the jaeger had already swung her right arm out and connected her staff against the surprised creature’s cheek with devastating effect and accuracy. The entire LOCCENT ripped itself wide open with howls and cheers as Rebel regained her balance from her pirouette, this time with her left side canon out blasting shell after shell after shell. Each pound of projectile to hide seemed only to make the control room rowdier than a second back. 

As if the fate of the battle—and in this case, humanity—rested in Baze’s witnessing the entire engagement, he risked a glance towards Chirrut beside him. Chirrut stood with the posture of an arrow as he would, the staff between his feet, laden with his hands. Baze couldn’t explain what he felt when he saw his serious expression and the light curl between his brows and on his lips. It was one part disappointment, another part anxiousness, and the rest of it was, to no joy of his, dread. 

Over at the sea, the battle went on in its own pace. The kaiju would charge to consume the distance, meet the business end of the serrated staff in a series of strikes and evasions and be kept at bay by the pummeling canon which had caused its hide to tear and bleed. It was a fine technique but not one that was meant to win the day. Ultimately, the demon had seen through their plan, like a dog learning new tricks. 

It stood back, away from Rebel’s extended reach. Its mouth split wide open to hurl a gob of bioluminescent spit that shot straight to the jaeger’s guarding left where the cannon was wide open, landing with a wet splat right where the nozzle was. A perfect web to seal it completely. 

Cassian cried out a loud, “ _Mierda!_ ” through the radio, pulling back the arm too late. “ _Left cannon’s compromised.Switching to right arm—_ ”

The OS hadn’t even given them a chance to try before it issued a critical warning, saying, “ _Malfunction. Weapons system disconnected._ ”

Jyn growled at the stoic voice, swinging Rebel’s right arm at a wide arc as if that was the hack that would solve their present predicament. “ _Right arm weapon system’s all jammed. I can’t get this bloody stick off my hand!!_ ”

“Rebel, twelve o’clock!” Kay screamed. 

They’d just gotten the Conn-Pod looking up in time to catch the kaiju charging for them, half-galloping, half-running down the sea. It seemed to come for them with a scream that was both human and something wrought from anger. The jaeger raised its staff forward like a jousting lance. 

Somehow, in spite of everything, the desperate strike had landed home, drawing a blue gash down the kaiju’s cheek, starting from the corner of its extended lips. The jaeger managed to step back before the creature’s own swiping hook crashed on its helmet. Momentum took it farther past Rebel. 

She turned to face it reorienting itself to them. There was a distance between them that could be accomplished by three mad jumps from the kaiju and it looked ready to make exactly that miracle happen. 

“ _Power move,_ ” Cassian barked, “ _now!!_ ”

“ _Stardust initiated,_ ” the system responded, summoning the multitude of ports that soon littered the black armor like well-organized pox. 

“ _Failed to initiate Stardust._ ”

“ _What?!_ ” Jyn gasped at the report. 

“ _Right quadrant weapons system disconnected._ ”

“ _Override the damn thing!!_ ” Cassian roared, matching the kaiju’s own battle cry as it finally leapt from its starting position. 

“Rebels, incoming!!” Kay bellowed. 

“ _Activating Hibernation Mode._ ” Jyn. 

“ _Hibernation Mode,_ ” the machine responded, “ _activated._ ”

It was the first of its kind that Baze had ever seen—the ports closed up, the jaeger seemed to have shrunken into itself while its plates shifted, sealing any windows, any pockets within its armor that may be used against itself. Several warnings shot off in the LOCCENT terminals, responding to jammed mechanisms that couldn’t complete Rebel Hope’s defense but by then, it was too late to turn back. 

The kaiju jumped for the shrunken version of the jaeger and struck a falling claw upon its ebony hide. Cassian and Jyn each gave a jolted cry. 

“Jyn!!” Baze roared before he caught himself stomping one foot forward. 

“ _Hibernation Mode completed at 82%_ ,” the machine reported. “ _Power capacity stable at 71%._ ” They were generous figures considering the jaeger’s circumstances but Baze only heard one thing from the script: Jyn and Cassian were sitting ducks unless someone else could do something about it. 

“We have to get them out of there,” Baze breathed, turning to the quiet training master beside him. He had a deep frown on his face and deep creases on his brow. Underneath the LOCCENT’s panic and the kaiju’s frustrated thrashing fed through the radio, his words were quiet and reserved only for the both of them. “There’s no way that thing is going to let them escape with their lives.”

A fact of life that was all too obvious. Chirrut knew this, he could see it in those blind eyes gazing up from his feet, trying to pin his face. Cassian and Jyn demanded for reinforcements. Kay advised them to hold their ground. It was a story that Baze and Chirrut only knew all too well, with an ending neither wanted to see reenacted again. 

Baze was only given a second to let the obvious sink deep in his guts. Chirrut did not wait much longer before he was already heading back towards the lift. Baze headed off himself. 

The good thing about making this decision in the midst of a boiling sea of hysteria was that no one was in the proper mindset to do anything about it—but that was the only thing he could come up with by far. He moved calmly between stations on fire, guiding rushing officers pass him until he could make it to the front where Kay was neck-deep in veritable shit. 

He introduced his presence with a hand above the console, his large figure looming close to Kay whirling at him. “We have to get them out of there,” he said in a deep, calm voice. 

“This might surprise you but we figured that out about five minutes ago,” Kay snapped back, obviously irritated by Baze’s senseless interruption. “The commander’s on the phone with Hong Kong.”

“Hong Kong’s not going to make it.”

They jumped when a deafening bang erupted suddenly. Cassian and Jyn were making preparations to evacuate. From the manual he read, he knew that that generally included self-destruction. 

Kay glared at Baze. “Yeah and who we gonna call? Shanghai? Tokyo? They’re all dead!”

“Kaohsiung isn’t.”

“What the _hell_ kind of—” It wasn’t difficult to draw the conclusions from there. Kay’s eyes became perfect circles when it dawned on him. “That’s crazy.”

“The whole world’s gone crazy, what makes this any different?”

“We’re not even sure if you’re compatible!”

“At this point in the game, I think matchmaking is the least of our concern,” Baze said. “We need to give them a fighting chance, they’re sitting ducks out there!”

“And what makes you think you won’t make things worse?”

Baze spun around to meet Mothma. She stood off at the side, in the dark, a white ghost keeping this murder machine running, hunched over that side of the controls. “I don’t have a plan in my head, I haven’t got statistics to prove it,” he admitted. Calmly. To the face of the commander herself. “All I’m asking you is to have faith. We have exactly one good jaeger here and one former ranger who still knows how to jockey. Now all that ranger needs is a co-pilot.”

“Baze, do you even know what you’re saying?” Kay chirped in. Baze had to hand it to the man for keeping his head intact in spite of the emergency. “We haven’t even test driven that jaeger yet, you don’t even _know_ if you can carry the neural load. It could break you!” he said. “The Rooks had a record of five drops and five kills but that didn’t save them from the neural overload. There’s like a 78% chance your plan is going to end up in a pile of shit!”

“We’re already in one, what makes more any different?” Baze replied readily. “We’ll test drive that jaeger. Chirrut and I can share the load.” He turned to Mothma, who looked on with a face that betrayed nothing. “Someone once said that we could make things right. We just have to be brave enough to do something about it.” Doubtless Mothma had heard that line before him. He didn’t even know why he’d said it, what sort of response he was expecting. 

Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t Mothma saying, “Then prepare for deployment. You have five minutes.”

⚠

_That_ was when the panic set in.

He’d bolted past the LOCCENT without even sparing any word of affirmation to his first command as a one-time ranger. A Strike Trooper stood ready to receive him, holding the lift doors open, and then he was falling to the suiting room at the basement of the ziggurat where practically every technician in sight was dragging him out of his clothes and into the circuitry suit. Chirrut was nowhere near to greet him or at least to assure him that he wasn’t the only idiot between the two of them. He didn’t even know if they had extra battle armors for engineers gone rogue! 

The thought had barely left him when the technicians had arrived with exactly what he was missing—a full battle armor set but not made just for him. The red pieces of polycarbonate were rolled in in individual crates, each one a vivid memory, every one of them as familiar as an old friend. Baze could never have expected that the PPDC would keep a spare of his brother’s Drivesuit but he doubted that they had meant to preserve it as an artifact of the past, not with the steep budget cut. 

The technicians worked fast, piling and screwing on one layer of the bulletproof shell after another. He couldn’t begin to imagine how anyone of a lesser stature than him—for instance _Jyn_ —could have so much as walked three paces bearing all that weight, how Chirrut might have managed blind under his old suit of armor. How Chirrut might have felt to be back in it. 

“Where’s Chirrut?” he asked suddenly, the first to speak out among them. The entire assembly had taken all of a minute from the body suit to the spinal clamp that would secure his senses to the rest of the jaeger. It was not a perfect fit—the shoulders were tighter, the sleeves a little longer and the hips broader at the wrong side—but it was much better than anyone could have hoped for given such a narrow timeframe. 

They led him down an underground passage that connected the suiting room to more familiar terrain—only this time, he wasn’t approaching the jaeger bay as an engineer. 

And this was the first time he would ever step foot in the Conn-Pod of a Mark IV. A part of Baze wished he had time to gawk at the hull without the fate of the world lying on his shoulders. It was not as small, or as cluttered as he was used to; as newer tech was wont to be, Rogue Alpha favored a simpler, more minimalistic design, taking advantage of digital improvements to replace a number of analog necessities. 

There were no technicians guiding him this time. Turns out a Mark IV had no need for such human intervention. 

“Hope you don’t mind I take the right side, as always.”

Baze couldn’t believe he’d missed the man in a red suit looking at his direction from the right side wall, dwarfed by lines of plates, grids and ridges guarding several fragilities and weaknesses that spanned from his feet and swooped upwards to the dark ceiling. He thought he must have been feeling his way through the Conn-Pod, familiarizing himself with its layout. And now he wondered how they were going to make this farce work. It would be a shame, Baze thought suddenly, if they would have to call it off just like that. Chirrut was a sight to reckon in his battle armor, as he always was. He’d always believed that the suit had been designed entirely for the purpose of accentuating his shoulders and his form, and he still believed the same now, looking at him. 

“I guess it’s not like I have a choice,” Baze said, following Chirrut’s motions, stepping up to his left side, right next to a pair of magnetic clamps embedded on the floor. He’d heard it said that whoever stood on the right side was the dominant pilot and in the case of his first rodeo, he thought that wasn’t a bad arrangement. “But now how are we supposed to fight with one eye blind?”

Chirrut smirked at the question. “Watch and learn.” Without another beat wasted, he jammed his feet onto his magnetic clamps, activating the overhead control arm with the red helmet between itself. The ranger hadn’t even waited for it to find his head before he was already flipping through switches, opening up the communication line to report, “Two pilots on deck. Secure the Conn-Pod.”

Baze almost jumped when the door to the outside world slammed shut. He rushed to catch up with Chirrut. 

“ _Conn-Pod secured,_ ” Kay reported. Baze heard it from the helmet coming down on him. It locked perfectly into place with a series of clicks and whirs. The inside of it illuminated. “ _I hate to say this but I’m glad to hear from you again, Chirrut._ ”

“ _Engage drop,_ ” Mothma prompted. 

“ _Engaging drop, Ma’am._ ”

“Rogue Alpha ready for the drop,” Chirrut responded. Baze was in awe of how smoothly he executed the procedure. Chirrut switched off their line briefly to ask Baze with a smile, “You ready for the big drop, big man?”

Baze raised his eyebrow. “Don’t sound so cocky, old-timer.” Chirrut laughed. Baze felt nervous. He was starting to talk like a proper co-pilot, or so he thought. As if he really knew what he was doing. 

Chirrut came back on the line to LOCCENT. “Release for drop.” With an accurate swing of his fist, he slammed down on a button between them. 

Baze’s knees caved when the Conn-Pod suddenly gave below his feet, flipping his stomach and sucking it all at the same time as they fell down a chute that reminded him uncomfortably of an elevator out of control, even though this was a part of the entire deployment process he had learned back in his days in the academy. If it hadn’t been for the motion rig system, he was sure he would have fallen off his feet and hurt himself. 

The relief that filled him when the descent began to slow down was almost more embarrassing than his shock. He felt the ground beneath his feet again and the bangs of locks clicking in place. The entire Conn-Pod thrummed in response and lit up from the corners, like an engine coming online. 

“ _All systems are green, proceeding as normal,_ ” Kay reported. “ _Performing pre-handshake protocol._ ”

“Do we really have time for that?” Baze gasped suddenly. 

“Yes. We do,” said Chirrut after a pause. “Baze, look at me. I can practically hear you breathing in my ear.” He laughed. 

Baze snapped to his co-pilot. 

“I won’t tell you what it does to me,” Chirrut smiled, “but I need you calm and steady for this mission.” And he was so calm and steady when he said it, with a voice that reminded Baze of a flowing river. “Cassian and Jyn are out there, waiting for us. I need you fit enough to get the both of us out there to help them.”

“Yeah? You ever been an engineer who woke up one morning and suddenly he’s jockeying for the first time?” He was not making any sense. 

“I’ll let you in on life’s biggest secret,” Chirrut said, the vestiges of a smile on the corners of his lips, still. “I’m scared. All rangers are,” he went on gently. “The drops and kills do not matter, each time we’re going out there to fight is different. I’m scared I might lose control, I’m scared I will no longer have it in me. But I won’t give in because you are there.” He paused to let those words sink in. “You need me, as much as I need you. That’s why this is a two-pilot system. We need each other.”

It was strange, hearing him say that. A two-pilot system, the left and the right, working together, one no less important than the other, it was all textbook material. But Chirrut had once piloted a jaeger on his own. His co-pilot had once abandoned him in the Drift so he could save his life. In spite of all that, Chirrut still believed in the two-pilot system. Baze figured that in that department, he and Jed had really been co-pilots. He wished he could have his faith, though. 

“The bad news is that it’s going to be ugly out there,” Chirrut went on. “The good news is that,” he shrugged, “at least we’ll be in this together.”

At the end of the day, Baze thought that that was always the best part of it. No one would have ever been brave enough to walk right into the jaws of death if they didn’t have a companion for it. “Misery does love company,” he said, and Chirrut grinned. 

“ _Pre-handshake protocol complete,_ ” Kay returned. “ _Things are looking up nicely, boys._ ”

“ _Prepare for neural handshake._ ” Mothma. 

“ _All right, boys, don’t fuck this up,_ ” Kay said. “ _This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this but don’t make it be the last._ ”

Chirrut reached for the switch at his side. “Copy that, boss.”

This time, Baze reached for the same button near him. “Can I keep my job at J-Tech if things go south?”

“ _I’ll let you keep your job if you can keep your parts intact. Initiating neural handshake in ten…nine…_ ”

“Ho boy,” Baze whispered to himself as Kay counted down to his ears. In a panic, he started rifling through what little of the Drift he could remember back in the years. Don’t chase the rabbit, the Drift is silence. 

“ _…six…five…_ ”

He turned suddenly to Chirrut and at a loss, wished him, “Good luck.”

“ _…four…three…_ ”

Chirrut laughed. “I don’t need luck,” he said. 

“ _…two…_ ”

“I have you.”

“ _…one._ ”

The world disappeared in a vacuum of sound, turned into fleeting images that resembled half-baked memories trying to make sense of themselves. He heard the tinkle of laughter of the children back in the orphanage, of Sister Lili ringing the supper bell and him and his brother racing the others to sit by her side. He remembered them polishing metal in Uncle Wong’s junkyard at the back of the orphanage, the sting of the dog’s bite, of the toolbox landing on his feet, of the belt landing on his palms for daring Jed to play a prank on the ugly postman. 

Chirrut had been punished the same way, again and again and again, until his mother sent him off, away from his friends in the juvenile gang to live with his aunt in Macau where he watched his mother die in Manila during the kaiju attack when she was visiting relatives. Baze had seen the same images from his adoptive family’s living room when he and Jed had come by for family lunch, his mother screaming in terror for their stunned stepfather to switch the TV off. It was like the old sentai serials he and his brother wasted their afternoons on, Baze was the robot, Jed was the kaiju, Chirrut was in the dojo and then the boxing ring and then back again. His aunt and his uncle wore the medal around his neck, he waved, he saw Baze looking at him across the training room, he smiled, he waved.

He sat with Jed and Baze in the long table and extended his hand to Baze, he sat with Jed and Baze in the long table and howled when Jed won the arm wrestling match. He and Jed swung the bottle on Ruby Hope’s foot, he and Jed disappeared behind the door to Ruby Hope’s Conn-Pod and Baze remembered how to pray to God, to his angels, to the Virgin Mary, anyone who was ready to listen to him and grant him his pleas. He and Jed came out of the suiting room to a victory party, Baze held him close, almost kissing him in the sight of his brother and his boyfriend, and the one that came after and the other that came after that other one, with waves of quiet relief and a sick kind of joy whenever he should find Baze alone, Chirrut alone, Jed alive, Jed alive. 

Jed is there in the Drift, Jed is there in the bed next to him, Jed is there in the left platform, Jed is there across the mat, Jed is there in his arms.

Jed is there on the bridge, his hand is there on his shoulder. _We’ll come back._

_You always do._

_Good luck out there, brother._

_I don’t need luck. I have you!_

He lurched back—and the world lurched back with him. All around him, he could hear the engines at the pit of his stomach roaring to life, the exhaust ports opening up as the heads-up display flickered all around him in a festival of colors and information too many for a single brain to contain.

Fortunately for him, there were two of them now, taking it all in.

“ _Right hemisphere,_ ” said a voice in their heads as they raised first their right fist and then the left in perfect synchrony, “ _calibrated. Left hemisphere calibrated._ ”

“Holy shit,” Baze gasped, gaping at the digital screens, the maps, the running metrics, and Rogue Alpha heaved with him. “Chirrut, are you seeing this?”

“That would have been a stupid question if we were standing outside the Conn-Pod but,” Chirrut laughed, a beacon of calmness. “But as it turns out, my theory stands correct.” He turned to Baze and Baze looked at him, looking back at him. “I can see now,” he said. He could see now because Chirrut’s brain had found a way through the neural bridge to reroute itself to Baze’s optic nerves and send the information back to him. And if that wasn’t good enough to prove that the mindmeld had worked perfectly between them, Baze didn’t know _what_ it would be.

“ _Proofed and transmitting. Neural handshake steady and holding! Commander, can you see this?_ ” Kay spoke excitedly through their earpiece. “ _Compatibility’s peaking at a hundred and _twenty_ percent!_ ”

Mothma took the mic from him. “ _Rangers,_ ” she addressed them. “ _Your orders are to provide all manners of support to Rebel Hope stranded in the East China Sea with a Category IV._ ”

“Heard that one before,” Chirrut snarled, an emotion Baze had become sympathetic to owing to their joint past and joint minds.

“ _Get them out of there, finish the fight and if it’s not too much to ask of you, bring all of you back here. Alive. We’ll need you all intact for the next mission._ ”

“Now that’s more like it,” Baze muttered before he reached for the mic switch to send a reply. “Tall order but we’ll do our best.”

“ _Godspeed, Rangers._ ”

The ground shuddered under their feet. Baze and Chirrut braced themselves in unison as the bay platform detached itself and began the careful climb out of the earth. They looked up when the overhead gates opened, the HUD responding to the moving objects, pinning them with circles and lines that declared one human and the other a jumphawk.

The radio crackled with a new voice. “ _—atch me in, patch me in!!_ ”

“ _Bodhi, you’re in._ ” Kay.

“ _Yes! Okay, okay, Baze? Baze, can you hear me? Chirrut, can you—_ ”

“Bodhi, you’re loud and clear,” Baze answered.

“ _Good! Good, okay. You’ve read her manuals. Right?_ ” Bodhi continued. “ _You’ve read her blueprint when you helped with the preps. Okay, I know that. Okay._ ” And then he began to speak quickly, “ _Rogue doesn’t have a lot of firepower, she only has a pair of mini-plasma cannons in each of her shoulders but her wings have in-built stunners and projectile stunners and each of her arms are equipped with chain whips that can channel electrical energy to stun the kaiju—_ ”

“Which is why she has another energy core at the back, inside her wings.”

“ _Exactly! Now, who’s on Mum’s side?_ ” The platform slammed beneath them.

“Where’s she?”

“ _Who’s on the right side?_ ”

“Me!” Chirrut said.

“ _Okay. There’s a manual override there if you need to restart the power flow, like if you want to redistribute it, and then the emergency exit and the flares are also on your side._ ”

“What about the warning horn?”

Baze groaned. “Really?”

“ _There’s one at each side— Okay, okay, cables locked. Lifting off._ ”

They felt the lines draw taut as it pulled on their shoulders, the metal groaning at the strain as they rose higher and higher off the ground. Baze reviewed everything he’d heard from Bodhi’s crash course and the ones he’d picked up from the jaeger’s own documents, putting together her power moves, her capacity, her failsafes, everything. Just in case there might be something in there that might save their lives. Win the day.

“ _Coming up to position,_ ” Bodhi returned suddenly, snapping Baze out of their shared thoughts, eyes scanning the HUD urgently for their target. “ _Disengaging cables in t-minus 60 seconds._ ”

“Cut it short, Bodhi, drop us at 30,” Chirrut chased him immediately.

“ _You’re sure?_ ”

“Positive.” Chirrut glanced at Baze.

“ _Roger that. Cutting cables in t-minus 30._ ”

“You ready for this?” 

Baze shrugged. “A bit too late to ask that, isn’t it?”

“I was talking about the mating call—”

“Don’t lie to me, Chirrut, I’m in your brain.”

Chirrut grinned. “ _10 seconds,_ ” Bodhi started to count. “ _Nine, eight…_ ”

Baze faced the screen where the map blinked in blue and green, keeping track of their target indicated both as _Rebel Hope_ and _Dorobou_ with a dot and a line each. The latter of them seemed to be circling the former, and he heard another prayer in his head shooting off skywards, where he hoped that it would land somewhere where it would be heard. 

“ _…three, two, one. Disengaging cables now._ ”

The lines snapped, and then they were falling, instinct bringing their knees up and their elbows high as they tore down the sea. It was a windy day out, Baze had noticed. He thought about how they could use that to their advantage.

They landed with a tiny meteor crash, the water bursting under their feet, soaking them up to their chest. Their plates shifted and sealed up, saltwater cascading like waterfalls as they rose up slowly to their fullest height. Rebel Hope in her dwarven state, her head between her shoulders, still stood a couple of paces away from them and the kaiju with her, but that had been the point. If they could just draw it away from the battered jaeger, then they would have accomplished their first task. 

The second would then be defending themselves against it and somehow killing it along the way. It was a sharp creature that whirled at them, the moment they had arrived quite ceremoniously—and it was much bigger than Baze had ever expected. This was his first time facing a real kaiju, after all, and it was one that had trapped a team with a record of nine drops and eight kills at that. 

“Okay, Baze, get ready, this is it!” Chirrut reached for the horn’s buzzer. “Here comes doomsday in four. Three. Two.”

_One,_ Baze thought, clenching his right fist. 

The warning horn blared like the end of days, playing twice in long drawn out notes. The kaiju writhed in irritation and responded with a maddened shriek and a wild twist that sent it back underwater, heading straight for them. In one beat, they slid their foot back and bent down in a half-crouch, fists raised to each their side. The water bubbled and frothed where the kaiju slithered angrily. 

If he hadn’t been connected to Chirrut, Baze didn’t know what he might have done when the Category IV burst back into existence from the water, all angry and black with murder written all over itself. But Chirrut moved and he followed, jumping forward a step to meet the kaiju and swinging his fist up in a sharp uppercut. Steel slammed right onto scale and meat, the impact reverberating down to his elbows. 

“ _Who the bloody hell?!_ ”

“ _Is that Bodhi?_ ”

“ _It can’t be him, I’ve never seen him fight like that._ ”

“ _It’s not,_ ” Bodhi confirmed Rebel’s pilots’ suspicions. “ _It’s not!_ ”

The kaiju flew and crashed back into the water. Rogue drew back her space, sliding her feet apart for the next move again. 

Chirrut whistled, “This thing really moves!”

“Now I understand why you can’t seem to leave the Conn-Pod behind,” Baze exhaled, still lingering at the thrum of a direct hit at his right fist. Half his mind was in the battle at hand but the other was in the Drift, which was a treasure trove of similar experiences from both sides of the hemisphere and they all felt _good_. It felt good to be feeding the kaiju with its own medicine, it felt fantastic to be delivering one whopping _fuck you_ to it in person. _Fuck you for Jed,_ Baze thought. _Fuck you for Jyn!_

They turned to each other to share a quick smirk. 

When the kaiju flailed back up to its feet, Rogue charged her and slammed her left shoulder around the hypothetical area of her solar plexus, bringing her down again to the water with a great splash. As one, they lifted their right fist and slammed it down, again and again and again. First at the face and then at the neck and then at the chest, Chirrut’s lessons of basic anatomy flashing briefly at the back of their minds for every hit that they landed. 

And then it disappeared in a flash of pain. The kaiju had caught their fist mid-hit which prompted Baze to loosen his grip on it with his left arm as a matter of self-preservation. In a swing, they flew off from the kaiju, the world tumbling in layers of sky and water and sky again before they managed to correct themselves. Chirrut forced their right knees down and both their arms up to balance themselves when they finally landed in a crouch and slid back until the momentum equalized itself. 

Up ahead, the kaiju galloped for them, dripping blue where Rebel and Rogue had inflicted damage on it. “Let’s try this chain whip thing Bodhi’s talking about,” Baze said as both their fists came up, facing forward. 

“ _Initializing Chain Whip,_ ” their console echoed, their HUD responding to surround their raised fists with a holographic representation of the move. 

“You know, suddenly I am glad we quarreled yesterday,” Chirrut said as they kept an eye on the rampaging kaiju, their display counting down its distance in rapid decrements. Because otherwise, if they hadn’t quarreled, Baze would not have found an excuse to immerse himself, at least for a day, with the jaeger they were now driving. 

“That was still a dick move, Chirrut.”

“I know, I know.” Chirrut turned to him with a grin. “I promise not to attempt it again.” Because anyway, they were now, miracle upon miracles, co-pilots. 

“Eyes on the road, Chirrut, you don’t wanna get into an accident on your first day out.”

“Between the two of us, who pissed himself on his first day out for a swim?”

“I was a kid then, okay? I’d never been to the beach so I was excited!” Baze scowled as Chirrut laughed. 

“ _Impact warning: 10 meters._ ”

“Chain whip release, now!” Chirrut barked. 

The length of steel shot upwards from an opening at the top of their wrists, with weights at the end ensuring a direct hit on the approaching monster which soon became entangled with the line by some feat of physics and smart algorithm from the jaeger’s OS. They drew it taut, twisting their hands around it for a better grip as Baze commanded, “Activate electrical charge.”

“ _Electrical charge activating._ ”

A spark of blue and silver flashed down both linking chains, bursting at the end of the line where the kaiju had been poised to receive it with a maddened shriek. Baze kept an eye on the steady decrease of their power levels flashing between their digital feeds—until something snapped. 

The creature had started to pull back and yanked one of the links at Chirrut’s side open. In one second, Baze’s thoughts blinked from, _Are you kidding me, that’s 100% aluminum alloy,_ to, _Well, that was fun while it lasted._

It hadn’t given them a chance to react before it was already flinging them off their feet, using the links as a torque. The chains tore in mid-air, one ruined end smacking Chirrut’s side in the Conn-Pod’s eye, temporarily blinding both of them in a shot of pain. 

“ _Rogue, get your wings out now, now, now!!_ ”

Kay’s voice ran like alarm bells in their heads, panic throwing Baze’s hand up to the switch that would deploy the wings. Its symbol came up in their joint feed. 

By the time they had smashed back into the water, the jaeger’s wings had unfolded in full although one part of Baze’s side had come loose, caught between expanding and the impact of the sea. He felt the blow burst through his and Chirrut’s chest, both of them crying in combined shock. The Conn-Pod flashed red for every part that existed within the system. Baze was just glad that the energy cores weren’t one of them. 

“So that’s what the wings are for,” Baze groaned, helping them up on their elbows. 

“And here I thought jaeger could finally fly,” Chirrut said. 

“You’re talking about a spacecraft. If jaegers could fly, we’d just be blasting the kaiju off to the moon.”

“You picked that from my brain or something?” Hand on his knee, Chirrut pushed them both up. “I swear Jed once told me that.”

“ _I_ said that, the idiot stole it!” But Baze wasn’t going to say anything about how that thought had eased him, making the memories of Jed piloting the late Ruby Force sparkle at the back of his head. Once upon a time, Jed, a seasoned ranger, had been placed in the same situation and had survived it long enough to eventually save Chirrut’s life in his last fight. Somehow that made his circumstances much more bearable. 

_For Jed,_ he thought fists raised again to meet the charging Kaiju. One half of his mind saw his twin in the same pose and he tried to shift himself to a closer version of it. “This thing is never going to end, is it?” Baze asked suddenly, the kaiju drawing alarmingly closer. 

“Not if we do anything about it,” Chirrut snarled, reaching for the switches again. “Initiate plasma cannons.”

“ _Plasma cannons initiated._ ”

The idea had been to engage the kaiju with energy bolts in an attempt to counter whatever damage the kaiju might throw at them upon close contact but there hadn’t been a chance to test if the crazy plan would work at all. No sooner had the kaiju raised its claw to punch before a flash of light had burst upon its back and shoved its arm down and off its trajectory—followed by another, and then another, each bomb landing with splatters of blue, digging deeper into the shoulder chunk even as it turned to face the source. 

“ _Baze, Chirrut, get the hell out of there!!_ ” Cassian cried. 

The last of his hysteria had almost gotten lost in the kaiju’s rage when it charged forth, falling down on all its fours. Baze had yelled back his warning in his panic, leaving Chirrut to deliver the order to engage the runaway kaiju with their own plasma cannons. 

_Jed, the cannons, now!!_

Baze whipped to face his co-pilot, flashing red with the rest of the Conn-Pod. There was a siren blaring overhead, the frantic screams of a woman, not quite drowned out by the sound of plasma cannons repeating again and again and again. Like the smacks of the belt on his stinging palm, like the smacks of the fighting sticks in the Kwoon Training Room. 

He turned, and there was the kaiju caught in a crossfire between two jaegers, Jyn’s voice ringing strong in the air. Chirrut’s own cries joined her chorus like distant echoes from the past, beckoning to a different time. 

_Jed, left flank!_

_Jed, we need to draw it in!_

_Jed!_

_Jed!!_

The boom of cannon fire pounded in Baze’s ears, each one of them demanding for his twin until finally, desperate to regain that silence from earlier, he answered to them all with a splintered focus—and that was when the Drift shattered.


	7. Chapter 7

“ _Pilot out of alignment._ ”

It was Chirrut’s worst nightmare come to life, the snap of something terrible at the back of his head, like the uncomfortable ripping of a nerve. Before it had happened, he had been worried that it would be _him_ who would be dragged under the current with the weight of his memories but it was Baze who was standing there, still as a statue, frozen and gaping at the unseen past running amok in his head. “Baze,” he beckoned, then tried again louder, “Baze!!”

“ _Chirrut, what the hell’s going on, why did you stop?!_ ” Cassian cried. 

“ _Rogue, pilot out of alignment!_ ” Kay followed. 

Chirrut ignored the tech officer. “Baze is out of alignment!”

“ _What?!_ ”

“Cover me, I’ll get him back out here. Baze,” Chirrut started, abandoning the fight to search for his co-pilot. At the back of his head, he could hear the static rustle of the ruined Drift like a broken TV channel, the pressure of the neural bridge building up at the back of his eyes, as it once had when Jed pulled him from the right hemisphere. He tried not to panic at the flashes of recollection but it was difficult. “Baze, can you hear me?” he called to his co-pilot. “Pull yourself back in the Drift, I need you finish this fight with me. Baze?”

_Baze!!_

⚠

It came to him like an echo at the end of a corridor, fainter than the sharp cracks of unseen footfalls. It was like being in two worlds at once, all worlds at the same time, even though none of them was, and had been created for him. Every single one of them begged him to be someone he couldn’t be but if he didn’t answer, they would not stop hounding him.

_We’re doing this, Jed!_

_Come on! Jed for the win!!_

_Jed…Jed!_

_Baze!!_

He whirled, searching for his name. In the Conn-Pod under turbulence, in the suiting room, out on the bridge. Red, blue, and black and blue. 

_We’ll come back._

_I know. You always do._

_Onewiththeforce,forceiswithme…_

_Baze!_

_Come back!_

He’d never heard of that thought before, that desperate plea thrown out in the darkness of a room full of sirens, tipping over. It anchored him like a fish, dragging him from one current to another. He heard his voice gasp his name again and he stayed there, where he could be far away from his twin hounding him. 

_You’re one hell of a brother, Baze._

_Not my Baze._

Black shirt under the shadows of a chopper, burnt skin under a shirt, the doorway across the doorway, the touch of skin against skin. Familiar glimpses, all of them treasured but it was a map he had to draw in the storm. 

But he followed it because he knew he had to—it was the only anchor he had left. Out in the forest, there on the mat, there in the Conn-Pod, there again beside him, a sight to reckon. 

_I can see now._

_Between the two of us, who pissed himself on his first day out for a swim?_

_Baze, wait._

_Baze?_

_Baze!_

⚠

The Conn-Pod exploded back in his face, not too different from how he’d remembered it—red lights, lots of shaking, lots of voices blending names into each other. The HUD’s confusing color wheel was not helping, neither was the black jaeger running for them or the shadow lurking at his side of the sea but what the mind could not make sense of, intuition could at least do something about.

Without knowing what it was, or what it is that scared him, he moved the jaeger’s left foot forward and twisted, exposing his back to the threat, stretching out an arm to his right shoulder to guard it. A great mountain fell on his shoulder blade with a blow that made them bow with shock. 

“Get these stunners working now!!”

“ _Stun wing initiated._ ”

They felt their nerves running like rats to the back of their wings and the shock of the kaiju convulsing in its frozen state. There was barely a congratulatory roar from it although there certainly wasn’t another fist flying for them and Baze took that as a good sign, even though he swore, he could _still_ hear the sirens blaring and the walls bleeding inside his ears. 

But, “I’m back!” he gasped, like a fish out of water. “I’m back, I’m back!” He had to be, he had mo other choices left. 

“ _Oh thank God!_ ”

“ _—Maria, about damn time, Baze!!_ ”

“I’m back, I’m back,” he chanted, more quietly this time although still confused, even as he struggled to move one foot and then the other. Sliding, whirling, keeping the kaiju, all dressed in blue in sight, shaking its head in their periphery. There was something wrong with one of its arms which hung too low to be completely functional. Baze squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, trying to clear his vision of the phantoms of the Drift. 

“ _Get the kaiju off our hide, we’re overriding the fuel check,_ ” Cassian snarled. 

“Copy that,” Chirrut replied. “Let’s give it everything we’ve got. Activate all stunners.” The OS echoed his command in the background. Reaching out, he landed a firm left on Baze’s right arm, drawing his wide gaze at him. “Baze, I’m here.”

“I didn’t expect the undertow,” he sputtered. 

“No one expects the undertow. But listen to me:” Chirrut said. “I’m one with the force and the force is with me. Repeat that after me. I’m one with the force and the force is with me.”

“I’m one with the force and the force is with me,” Baze obeyed. 

“You’re a natural,” Chirrut said, laughing and smiling and sending Baze’s heart jumping to the skies for them. “Say it for me at the back of your head. I need to hear it.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll take care of things for now. Catch up when you’re ready. I love hearing your voice, babe, but don’t keep me waiting!” Baze felt the knots in his shoulders click as Chirrut flexed it for the both of them, returning to their window. “Stunners out now!”

“ _Engaging stunners._ ”

Chirrut moved and so did he, but it felt like watching the action from the back of the camera, hearing the sounds but not listening. There was a kaiju ahead of them, shaking off the fog and projectiles in the air, some making a nose dive into the sea. 

“Shit!” Chirrut cried. 

“ _May God have mercy on you, Chirrut, but don’t let it be bad news!!_ ”

“Third quadrant propelling system is shot, I wasted a good couple of stunners,” Chirrut snarled. “Bodhi, does this thing have any hidden pockets?”

“ _Uh…negative, negative, once you’ve given the all-out, that’s it._ ”

It _was_ bad news. Baze persisted, keeping the chant running at the back as Chirrut had said, riding on Chirrut’s impulses and wave. He hadn’t even noticed that the Conn-Pod had stopped flashing, that the sirens had been silenced. 

For the first time since he could remember, the air felt clear, and he could breathe. 

Even when Kay was screaming at the top of their radio’s volume. And the kaiju was springing back out of the water in a mad frenzy, arm lashing. 

“Duck!” Baze cried, leading the maneuver which put them under the flying monster’s belly and their fist in position to slam onto a hip, the bone sadly unshattered owing to some spectacularly thick skin. But it worked all the same to dislodge its deadly aim and send it back, scrambling in the water. 

They hadn’t expected it to shoot up so quickly after, its one good claw grappling at Baze’s side of the neck, burning knives shooting down on his skin. A spark of anger had driven their right fist onto its head and then their elbow on the cavity near where its right arm was meant to be attached. Even so, Baze refused to break the chant; Chirrut would miss it. And it was like a wall of sound that trapped him in the world he needed to be in. If the Drift couldn’t be silence, it could at least be a drone. 

He wished he’d learned about this trick much earlier in the game but now, all the missed opportunities was only making his strikes harder and hotter. 

They blocked the bite with a lucky swing of his left arm. Baze felt the numbness squeezing in on his forearm, heard the metal popping under the pressure before the HUD warned him of a possible loss of function. 

“ _Baze, Chirrut, get out of there, we got it!_ ” Jyn cried. 

“Chirrut, go get us out of here, I got this!” Baze roared. Chirrut left him to focus his entirety on keeping the narrow mouth at bay while he reached for the slab of arm dangling uncomfortably on the kaiju’s side. One particularly violent yank was all it took to free the dead limb. 

And Baze, who tried to shut off his senses when the kaiju belted a scream for the pain but he worked fast to disentangle them both from its reaching arm, pushing, pulling and twisting to get the kaiju’s arm locked behind it like a common criminal’s. The better for them to trap it with an arm around its neck. 

“ _Baze, Chirrut, get out of there!_ ” Cassian screamed. 

“It’s not going to stay still unless we do this,” Baze said. “Just get on with it!”

“ _Our targeting system’s fucked up, it doesn’t distinguish you from the enemy,_ ” Jyn cried. 

“Just do it!” Chirrut cried. 

“ _Sod it,_ ” Jyn snarled. “ _Initiating Stardust._ ”

“ _Stardust,_ ” the broken voice of Rebel Hope followed. 

Baze had a moment to curse their luck as they held down the thrashing kaiju, its blood potentially already corroding Rogue’s chest armor, before he blazed through his memories of the manuals, Bodhi’s talk, anything they might have observed earlier that could save them from certain doom. They thought about the emergency pods as the stars shot up to the sky and descended on them but rejected the idea on account of Jyn’s warning and the wind strength. 

“Okay, Chirrut, on my count,” Baze started once they’ve grappled on the decision, fast as lightning. “Three! Two! One!” He held his breath. 

They shoved the kaiju off to the left while they dove for the water to the right. The incendiaries meant for their consumption swooped safely back to the direction of the kaiju as the wind blew. They crashed into the sea and waited. 

Even from down there, they heard the kaiju’s roar mingling with the explosion and the fire, a single blast of note that faded just as soon as it had started. A giant splash off their side followed it soon after, finished by a slow, heavy rain of other falling objects, perhaps better attributed to the kaiju’s body parts. They stayed low, in the company of their HUD humming and beeping with several analyses, not least of which was a broken wing. A handful of silent heartbeats later, they rose back up to the surface. 

All around them was gray skies, black sea and swaying waves. There was a dark jaeger standing off in the distance, like some tower lost but recovered from history. Baze heard the whipping, beating wind like a whistle in his great ears. He felt out of place; his heart was beating wildly for no reason. He couldn’t remember the last time there’d been so much peace and _stillness_ on hand. 

“ _LOCCENT, this is Rebel Hope, requesting immediate medical assistance,_ ” Cassian suddenly came up to their earpiece, shocking him. “ _It’s Jyn, she…she’s not breathing._ ”

“Cassian, what happened?” Chirrut asked after sharing a stunned glance with Baze. 

“ _I, I don’t know, I’m not sure, it was after Stardust but she triggered the command!_ ”

“Was she showing signs of nausea during the override?” Chirrut went on for the both of them in the midst of sparks of confusion passing between one side of the neural bridge to the other—but Drivesuits came with everything! Life support, oxygen, tracking. But Baze allowed for the possibility of a malfunction, anyway, searching his memory bank for anything he might have read or seen in the jaeger that might store a first-aid kit, a barf bag, a spare oxygen, candy, anything. He went in secret hatches, crevices, up and down pipes leading in and out of the Conn-Pod, the nuclear core, hell, even the weapons system— 

“Oh shit,” Baze said, turning to an equally shocked Chirrut, the bridge between them going silent. “I think she used her oxygen to—”

“Cassian,” Chirrut said to the man once he’d finally heard Baze’s thoughts. “Her oxygen is depleted, she’s used it all up. Give her your oxygen pipe.”

“ _But how could she—_ ” Cassian cut himself off with a growl. He became silent after, and they could only imagine that he might have removed the helmet to accommodate his co-pilot’s need. 

Chirrut opened the line to the LOCCENT again. “Kay, we need—”

“ _I got you, gentlemen, you’re all good,_ ” he interrupted, his nerves practically audible in the way that bells were audible from a mile away. There was something like a static noise wrapped around his voice and it was a second longer before they understood that it was the sound of victory raging in the LOCCENT. “ _Medical evac is on the way. You both can come back home if you want, kaiju signature’s nil. Good job, boys!_ ”

_Good job, boys,_ echoed the Drift. They turned to look at each other, in what felt like both the first and the hundredth time they’d done it, and decided they could do it a hundred times more for the rest of their lifetimes. Baze switched on the mic this time. “If it’s all the same to you then, we’d like to stay. I gotta keep an eye on my little sister.”

“ _Okay, noted on that, gives us more time to wait for the cake. I’ll see you on the ground later!_ ” Kay hung up. Despite the emergency, Chirrut flashed him a grin—not only for what he’d said but for what else he meant that only he— _only he_ —would understand. That he wanted them to stay there, in the Conn-Pod. Fighting for the world side-by-side.

With nothing more to say between them, Baze returned with his own grin.

⚠

Soon after Baze had stepped back into the world that he knew, it opened up around him and swallowed him whole. Everything came crashing into him all at once—the sound of cheering, the dashing feet, the orders flying from one officer to another and worse still, the _skylight_ illuminating the thick gray clouds and the blurry images of the entire base swirling as if in a cyclone around him. Baze managed to let out exactly one dumbfounded moan before he was folding into himself, knees hitting the concrete next to the open Conn-Pod like a doll. He pressed his ears and shut his eyes, tried to hide himself between his knees which was as good as fitting him in a 1-square-meter pipe. Heavy footsteps, practically like gunshots in his head, ran back and forth, wheels creaked like fingernails on a chalkboard and made him want to cry.

He was vaguely aware that Chirrut was bumping against literally everything that stood, speaking louder than was needed and crying every single time he hit something. Cassian had passed him speaking in stunted Mandarin and then Kay was suddenly there, grabbing him by the shoulder—or at least that was what it felt like to him. 

“Baze,” Kay yelled. Baze flinched; everything sounded like they’d been dialed up a thousand of notches. “Get yourself in the clinic, you look like me after twelve kinds of vodka.”

Baze mumbled something that was meant to be a coherent reply, raising a finger to demonstrate his meaning. “Okay. One second.”

Several concerned personnel had to help him up and drag him to the clinic when it was becoming more obvious that he wasn’t going to move on his own. After he was given the all-clear, he retired to his room, locked the door, and went to sleep curled up, his ear in his blanket, missing his very first victory party.

It was dark when he woke up some number of centuries after—he felt relieved. The objects no longer seemed to glow with a luminescence of their own, like fish in the deep, and the walls had finally stopped humming as though he was trapped in some old engine that could never seem to control itself. 

He moved carefully in the lightless room. He took a quick shower in an attempt to feel a bit more human, and then he left to face the world he had excused himself from briefly. With the damage that Rebel Hope had sustained from the fight, he figured that repairs ought to be well underway by now before the next kaiju decided to pay them an ugly visit. He stepped out of the apartment building, turned towards the jaeger bay. 

Baze found himself stopping by a stout storehouse, one of the few that only went up to two floors but for its proximity to the jaeger bay and the ziggurat, it was the perfect choice for the clinic. He knew Jyn was placed at the farthest ward from the entrance, that one completely enclosed in a blue curtain. 

And she was still there when he came, sleeping peacefully, one hand within Cassian’s grip. The other held the string of beads like he once did during their fight with Ochui. 

He sat with his head close to Jyn’s, bowed uncomfortably low, right next to the only drawer and the only other furniture in sight of the small space. Baze didn’t notice that his lips were moving silently until he’d announced himself and Cassian straightened up to face him. “I’m sorry,” Baze sputtered immediately in a low voice, stepping away from the wall. “I didn’t mean to interrupt—”

“No, it’s okay,” Cassian said with equal quietness, tossing up his hand with the beads. “I can pick up where I left off. It’s not a problem.” He smiled. The place was quiet; there was no one else in the facility except for the three of them and the nurse at the front. It felt very nice, and very comforting. 

When he noticed that Baze was looking curiously at his beads, he said, “Oh, it’s a rosary. Never seen one before?”

“I grew up in a Catholic orphanage but I only ever saw it around the matron’s neck.” Baze declined the offer to see it up close. “Never got to learn how to pray with one.” He pointed at Cassian. “Never knew you were religious either.”

“I wasn’t,” Cassian admitted. “But Mama was. She gave me this the day she left me at my uncle’s place. Ever since then, I…” He shrugged. “I just learned how to pray with it.”

“Good for you,” Baze said, nodding. A moment later, he turned to Jyn, and asked, “How is she?”

“She’s,” Cassian started quickly, twisting sharply towards the sleeping woman. Baze couldn’t say if the flicker of a frown on his face was real, or if it was just imagined. “She’s okay, she’ll be fine.”

“Did she wake up?”

“Yeah, she did.” Cassian nodded, looking at Baze. “She woke up and then she tried to sneak out so I think she’s okay.” He grinned and shared a quiet laughter with Baze. “Jyn hates being tied down.”

“Tell me about it,” Baze said, rolling his eyes, thinking back to that time just two days ago when Jyn had tried to fight him in the jaeger bay. 

“So,” Cassian said suddenly after a while, leaning back to his seat, laying his arm with the beads across his tummy. “Chirrut Imwe.”

Baze shrugged. “Don’t know what that says about me either.”

“No, no, I wasn’t trying to say something, I just…” Cassian shrugged, glancing at Jyn. “I mean, I’m a fan of the man. No, seriously,” he added quickly when Baze started to chuckle. “He was my and Jyn’s training master.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cassian said, gesturing to his head. “It’s probably somewhere in the Drift. I’m sure you’ll remember it. He had a running prize money for anyone who could beat him and I volunteered. Out of 5 points, I only got 0.” He shrugged when Baze choked. “I broke my toe, I hurt my elbow. And he didn’t even raise his staff, it was just 2 minutes of me hurting myself.” He chuckled. “I felt so embarrassed. Because of him, I almost packed up and left. I was so sure I would never get on a Conn-Pod because of him.”

“Thank goodness you stayed.”

“Yeah,” Cassian said. “Or else I wouldn’t have met Jyn. She pointed out all my mistakes to me while I was depressed.”

“That’s a keeper.”

“You can say that again,” Cassian snickered. “You know, this has never happened before,” he said apropos of nothing, throwing in a shrug. “Being co-pilots, I thought we were supposed to know everything that we’re thinking of but…Jyn, she slipped out of the radar.”

“So what happened?”

“We couldn’t access the right-side channels, they’d all gotten jammed but we needed enough fuel to execute Stardust. Jyn didn’t tell me she was already rerouting her oxygen to the Stardust Protocol. And I had,” he swept the hand with the beads, “ _completely_ no idea. No. Idea.”

Somehow, Baze realized he felt happy when Cassian refused to untangle himself from Jyn’s hand. “Well, maybe it just…” He shrugged. “Happens. Even on our own, we don’t always know what we’re doing. And we don’t always get what we expect, even if we think everything checks out.” It was not a good explanation, but he liked to think that there was something about it that made sense. He didn’t even know why he tried, Cassian didn’t seem to him as the type to ask for sympathy. 

For his efforts, Cassian put on a smile. “You know, we never got to thank you for what you did out there,” he said, nodding to Baze. “You and Chirrut. I’m sure we won’t be here if it weren’t for you both.”

Baze smiled, then shook his head. “I’m just glad you’re both alive. We wouldn’t be able to face ourselves if we didn’t go.”

Cassian gestured to him. “You doing okay, man? I mean…after what happened.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” Baze assured him, reaching back to his hair, pulled together in a knot. “I’m good, it was just…” He shrugged, flinging his hand up, “Yeah, I’m good.”

“I gotta say, you surprised me there,” Cassian said. “I never thought you had it in you.”

“Sometimes, I can rise to the occasion,” Baze replied with a little smirk, returning himself to the wall beside him. “That ever happened to you, though? The uhh…”

“The misalignment?” Cassian shook his head. “No, never. Sorry, Baze, I can’t be of help on that part.”

“No, it’s okay, I just thought I’d ask,” Baze mumbled. After a pause, he decided it was time to leave. Cassian still had a prayer to finish, and Jyn looked happily asleep. It had been quiet and nice but it wasn’t meant to last forever. “Hey, I’ll see you around, then,” he said, raising a hand to wave. 

“Don’t be a stranger,” Cassian said to him with his own. “Thanks for dropping by. I’ll let Jyn know.”

⚠

In the end, he didn’t make it to the jaeger bay.

Baze had just stepped out of the clinic when he’d made the decision that he wasn’t ready to face that noise yet—the sound of metal and and machines, clashing and echoing, the sparks, the white lights, all the shouting and the organized mess that came with another evening’s work. He put that behind him as he walked back to his apartment, then hesitated once more, for just a second, before he pivoted back to his track and took it all the way to the ziggurat at the end. There was exactly one other place he could think of to spend the night in without losing his mind in the confines of his room, and it was probably his favorite place to be when the clock struck twelve. 

Tonight was going to have to be another exception to the rule, the evening still being too early to be even called late. Baze nodded to the guards who were, by now, familiar with his presence and took the lift, as he would, up to the Kwoon. He watched the numbers rise in quick succession, listened to the usual _ding!_ and stepped out, moving mostly by habit than anything else. 

And yet he couldn’t say he was surprised when he saw that he wasn’t the first, and who it was who had beaten him to his place. Baze wondered if perhaps this was what the rangers meant whenever they spoke about the hangover from the Drift, like a phantom neural bridge that still kept both pilots connected in some way, leaking their thoughts and feelings from one end to another. 

Or in this case, being hyper aware of the other’s presence, no matter the distance that had stretched between them. They were no longer standing side-by-side in the Conn-Pod, but Baze could still feel his muscles clenching when Chirrut pulled back and swung out with his staff, the flow of his breath when he jumped and kicked, the friction when he spun his staff and stabbed at the shadow behind him. They would be in sync forever—mind, soul, heart, flesh, with or without the Drift connecting them. Baze understood that this was his life now. 

With an open mind, he walked right back into it, every step matching the beating of their two hearts, like a music that was never there before but now completed him. Chirrut spun again, the weight on the balls of Baze’s feet. 

He raised his staff and the wood met, a timid tap that was a far cry from the angry smacks that once passed between them. A quarrel. Now they met in kind greetings, with nothing more to prove and nothing more to hide. 

Chirrut stepped back and pushed his staff gently against Baze’s, drawing circles in the air in a way that would get rid of his opponent but Baze followed him, stepping forward, and kept their fighting sticks in contact until he shifted another foot out and pushed his staff to pierce, catching only air when Chirrut so calmly relocated it over his shoulder. He twisted his arm and ducked, escaping Baze’s trap in tight spins. 

Baze padded towards his graceful form and reached again with his staff. The quiet taps started again, like rhythmic beats which both players stepped to, like a song only they could compose. This was no longer a match, after all, where one must always outsmart the other or risk defeat. This was a dialogue, where one followed the other as easily as he would follow his own footsteps, like a dance, never lost. It was, by and large, a crude and sad replacement for something so sophisticated as the Drift, but they would take what they could, so long as it could make them feel connected. Again. 

“I should have known better than to let you go out there without a warning,” Chirrut said as they sat together on the mat, next to each other. He had a smile on his face and his blind eyes looked on to the space between them—even so, Baze could remember how electrified he felt whenever they gazed at him during the fight. “First Drifts are always rough. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll be unstoppable.” He grinned, and even when he couldn’t see it, Baze replied with his own smile. 

“I thought _I_ was unstoppable,” he went on in spite of Baze’s silence. He reached down to the bunched-up cuff of his track pants to tug it playfully, almost curiously, like a boy—which strangely translated to a pain in Baze’s heart, like a pinch or an itch that would never go away and seemed only to make his smile wider. “It’s all that jaeger stuff; you go out there and kill a monster, you come back feeling like a god.” He laughed. “I knew what happened to my eyes. When they said that the problem was not in my eyes but in the brain, I knew that if I Drifted again, I would be able to see. And I was right.” He beamed victoriously. He _was_ right. Baze had seen it with his own two eyes, but he wouldn’t stop Chirrut just because of that. Chirrut wanted to talk and so he would. 

“But what I didn’t take into account was the sensory overload,” he continued, looking a little sheepish at his confession. “I think what happened was that your brain had to work harder for the both of us, so when you came out of the Drift, you were getting signals for two people. While I was left with one less, and our brains were confused.” He arched his brows at Baze, smile stubbornly in place. “Did that make sense?”

Baze chuckled suddenly. “Even if it doesn’t, I’m your co-pilot. It doesn’t have a choice but to make sense!” Chirrut started laughing at his answer, joining him. 

They stopped, as suddenly as they started, like a pair of boys embarrassed, chided by the silence. Chirrut still had an insolent look on his face despite that. Baze looked on at him with fondness. “I never expected I would be telling you that one day,” he shared. 

Chirrut smiled at him again. “Now you can tell me everything,” he said. Everything. 

Baze and Chirrut knew everything now. Those backward glances, heads turning away in haste, stumbling tongues, empty hours filled only with lingering. 

Baze shifted, and Chirrut stayed put. Their fingers met, tip to tip on the mat. Slowly, Baze crossed the distance, bracing his weight on the heel of his palm as he tipped himself carefully, closer to the man who waited for him with parted lips, and breaths laden with anticipation. He smelled of mint, something sweet, and a hint of sweat that Baze swore he could already taste in his mouth as he opened it. Their lips met, first in tender nervousness. 

And then they moved, closer still, Chirrut reaching to take hold of Baze’s arm and Baze grasping him gently at the back of his neck and when they kissed again, it felt like a new world bursting open for the both of them, forged in the heat of their mouths. The fever spread like wildfire, outwards to the ends of their embrace, weakening and empowering all at once. They felt sick with relief, and the joy of being alive to share this kiss, no, _this_ kiss. 

Again and again and again, until the weight of their entangled passion carried them down to the mat. Chirrut was shaking, from his lips to his breath to his hands and Baze, enthralled by his effect, left him there on his back to find his jaw, his neck, his throat, bobbing nervously at the touch of his lips. Or that of his hand pulling up his shirt so Baze could lead the trail down to his heaving chest, his solar plexus, his abdomen. Baze’s hand groped for his hard nipple as he pressed a kiss on the shape under his trousers, between his legs. Chirrut sighed and arched his hips up to him. He called him and he answered, crawling up to kiss his lips, to be trapped in the loop of his arms and his legs, to do nothing but kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him. To remind him again and again that they were alive. They were alive. 

They were alive.

⚠

That night, he lied awake, watching Chirrut sleep, wrapped loosely in his arms. It was past midnight, the world gone dead around them, and for the first time since the day opened, Baze realized that he could hear himself think again.

It was a funny time for that observation, he thought. Earlier then, his mind was full of Chirrut and his dreams to get back in the Conn-Pod but now, his mind was just full of Chirrut…and nothing more. The shape of his lips, the softness of it, his fingers, his thighs, the bones of his shoulders, the sounds he made whenever Baze would kiss him, touch him, even bite him. Those especially had left their sure marks on his skin, some turning black so soon, but they did nothing to discourage Baze from wanting to pursue more for the rest of the night. 

With those thoughts, he got up, disentangled their legs as carefully as he could, heading for his bathroom to relieve himself. 

When he returned, Chirrut had turned his back to his side, and he knew that the man was awake. Even so, Baze lied carefully back down behind him, bracing his head on an arm on the pillow as he laid a gentle hand on his hip, right where he’d once held him as he tilted him up and rammed right into him. And then he saw the scars that Chirrut had carried from the day his brother died. 

He didn’t hesitate to trace them, as Chirrut had asked him to. He started with a tender finger at the rise of his shoulder, then followed the line down to the first detour to the left, down, right and back until it disappeared through the boundaries of his scar, and then he started all over again, like a tattoo artist polishing his design, a linguist reading the lines. In spite of it all, Chirrut still pretended to be oblivious to his efforts. 

So he laid his hand on his sleeve, brought his lips to kiss the scar as though he was paying respects to it before he applied his tongue and tasted it along its many pathways. The response was instantaneous; Chirrut tensed, but he didn’t stop yet. Not until he had painted his entire scar at the back wet with his own kisses, sucking a little at patches where he felt the man shiver. 

It was Chirrut who put an end to it by turning, and smiling at Baze’s approximate direction. Baze smiled in return, moving his hand to the back of Chirrut’s that was resting on his tummy. Even now, it felt slightly slick where he’d come and let his seeds dry. “What does it look like?” Chirrut asked suddenly. 

“Painful,” Baze said after a moment, when he realized that Chirrut had never seen his own scar himself. “Does it still hurt?”

Chirrut shook his head. “Especially not after you kissed it like that,” he said, laughing quietly. Baze joined him briefly. 

He leaned down to Chirrut’s lips and kissed him again, their fingers entwining. Baze nipped at the lower of it before he said, “Go back to sleep.” But Chirrut shook his head. 

So he laid back down on his pillow, and Chirrut turned to face him, their fingers still entwined between them. 

“What about you?” Chirrut asked in his own whisper. “Why are you awake?”

“I wanted to see you.”

Chirrut grinned. He shifted closer and kissed him for that, and Baze took advantage of the movement to draw them both closer between their legs, so Baze could press up to him and he could groan in delight. “I like it when you do that,” he admitted. 

Again, Baze smiled. 

Chirrut’s eyes fell, as though he could see again. Carefully, he pried Baze’s warm shaft between them free. His hand was cold, and Baze hissed softly but Chirrut didn’t let go and he didn’t pull back either. He watched in idle enjoyment while those fingers wrapped themselves around his girth, his thumb running up and down the skin in patient strokes. “Mm, I wish I could see you naked,” he said, playing on. “All the information I’m getting is that you’re big and tall. Extra thick.”

“Are you sure that’s not just your fantasies playing with you?” Baze chuckled. 

“Do you feel inadequate?” Chirrut quipped, grinning at him. Even so, he moved his heavy length to his stomach and rubbed it gently from base to tip, coaxing Baze’s sex drive back to life. Baze knew he wouldn’t have to work so hard to turn the switch, so to speak—already he could feel a pleasant tingle crawling up his belly and his back—but he would let Chirrut figure that out for himself. He would help him only by taking his free hand and leading it to his raised nipple. Chirrut caught on quickly, pinching and flicking it in his thumb. Baze stiffened in response to Chirrut’s glowing delight. 

“We should film the next time we have sex,” he giggled, gripping Baze’s cock firmly to press his thumb on the slit of its head. Baze stirred and kicked in response, muscles coiling tightly at the surprise pressure. “Then you’ll watch it and I’ll watch it in the Drift.”

“Does it work that way?” Baze felt nervous when he laughed. 

“It’s memories, Baze. The Drift doesn’t discriminate.” Tired of his nipple, Chirrut reached down and grasped for his fruits instead. Baze wished he could see the size of his own grin with all these pleasant sensations Chirrut was sending to him. 

He rested his hand on the shape of Chirrut’s ass and settled deeper into their shared pillow, idly tracing the line between his cheeks, teasing for his entrance. 

In an instant, Chirrut knew what was wrong, and his hands ceased massaging him. “What?” he whispered urgently, pressing up even closer to him, one hand parking itself on his broad shoulder like an anchor. “What, Baze? What is it?” Even if they hadn’t Drifted together, with how gently Chirrut was prodding him, it would have been impossible for Baze to refuse. 

Most especially not after Chirrut began to shower him with kisses, his lips so light and gentle, each one left Baze asking for more. He kissed him on his lips, on the corner, his cheeks, his jaw, his throat, his chin…

“You know, if you keep kissing me so tenderly, I’m going to have to pretend to be sad more often,” he groaned, chuckling. He rested his hand on the back of Chirrut’s shoulder to keep him in place. Even so, the man stopped and gazed up to him, frowning lightly. He wished he could wipe it off his face with another kiss but he knew now that the man would not appreciate it. “There are no excuses,” he started suddenly. 

Chirrut sighed and nodded, lying down on the pillow. “I know.”

“What happened out there was…” Baze trailed off, shrugged at a loss for words. “Inexcusable. It should never have happened. Frankly, I’m surprised Mothma let us have this much time together after that.”

“You’re speaking like co-pilots can’t be lovers,” Chirrut laughed. 

“Chirrut, you can’t imagine…I can’t even call you my co-pilot now!” Baze said, frowning at Chirrut’s furrowed brows. “I don’t want to call you my co-pilot if we can’t be co-pilots, anyway.”

“Oh, Baze…”

“It’s like this whole thing has been nothing but a dream,” he went on. “Drifting with you, fighting with you…and the sex is great, it’s better than great.” Chirrut’s amused laughter at least brought a smile to his face. “I’m a little scared about what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

Chirrut didn’t reply immediately, and when he did, he raised himself up to Baze’s lips to kiss him again, one hand near his ear, its fingers deep in Baze’s loosened hair. Baze chased after him, forcing his lips open to slide his tongue in, meeting Chirrut’s with careful caresses. The hand on Chirrut’s shoulder slipped down to his ass again, scooping his leg up to fold over Baze’s before he went back up, in search of his entrance. 

Baze lingered for more when their kiss ended, tongues out yearning still for a taste. When none came, he slipped down to satiate himself with Chirrut’s chest, greeting his nipple with a wet mouth, licking and suckling it as if for milk. Chirrut shuddered with a tight gasp. His length twitched between them. Baze reached for it as Chirrut pressed himself into his lapping tongue, his fingers weaving themselves in his locks.

“Baze, wait,” he groaned suddenly, hands shaking when he tore Baze’s mouth from his wet chest. “Wait!”

“What!” Baze demanded, irritated by the interruption. He glared at Chirrut and suddenly, he was glad the man couldn’t see him. 

Which was a small consolation, since the man could also _feel_ him from the hangover. He sighed, dropping his head to the pillow. “There’s no need for you to worry. You remember the chant that I taught you in the Conn-Pod? Do you know what kind of force it was?”

“Ruby Force,” Baze answered easily. 

Chirrut breathed out a great sigh, his fingers playing idly with Baze’s locks. “I probably shouldn’t be talking about another man here in bed with you, in _your_ room, but it was Jed who came up with that. Because we needed it to stay on the Drift. It says that the jaeger wouldn’t do anything we didn’t tell it to, and we wouldn’t do anything we disagreed on either. Like a reassurance.” He shrugged. “And it worked.”

His fingers folded themselves over the back of Baze’s neck. Baze shook his head. “So what are you saying? That we can always Drift again as long as we know the words? Chirrut, we can’t take this lightly, least of all you!” he said. “What if I hadn’t found my way back up? What would have happened to you? You’re already scarred enough!” 

“But you _did_ find your way back!” Chirrut laughed. 

“But what if I _hadn’t_?”

Chirrut sighed dropping his head back to the pillow. “Then I suppose neither of us would be here. But we’ll never know for sure, because you found your way back to me. Okay?” He tried to ease his worries, running the back of his fingers on the light mat of Baze’s beard. Baze opened his mouth to speak again, but he shook his head, so Baze stopped. Chirrut smiled. “We’re going to be fine,” he assured him. “Just have faith.” There it was again. 

Baze tried to smile back, but the misalignment was all still too real for him, like the trauma from drowning. He laid a hand instead on Chirrut’s, slipped his fingers in-between his. 

“But if we’re not okay,” he said suddenly, although it sounded like he had to fight his voice free from the monsters in his mind. After a long pause, he spat out the question, “Are you going to look for someone else?”

“Only if we’re 200% compatible,” Chirrut answered, brow high. “And he has to be as tall and big and strong as a tree trunk, so I can climb him like a monkey.” Baze choked, Chirrut snickered. He sidled closer to the man coughing in his own spit so he could nip his nose and flick his tongue on his lips—once, twice, until he was sweeping it from corner to corner, like an elaborate door knock that rewarded him with parted lips. He dove in, locking into Baze’s tongue with an eager embrace. His hands traced the downward slopes of each his shoulders to his chest and pushed him back. 

Baze wriggled and shifted, making room for Chirrut to straddle him, legs wide, cock out, leering with a cat’s smirk. Baze laughed but Chirrut would know how much it aroused him. Especially when he soaked his fingers in his mouth and painted circles with it, around his areola. All at once, Baze grunted and stiffened, toes curling. 

Chirrut shushed him, using the same fingers to seal Baze’s mouth. “I’ll let you play with it later but I get to play with you first,” he said. “There’s something I saw in the Drift that I want to try.”

“I’m going to pay for this, aren’t I?”

Chirrut grinned. Bending low, he searched for Baze’s ear, and when he found it, he gave it a soft kiss before he said, “Trust me, you’re gonna love it.”

⚠

At the top of the ziggurat, one could see to the ends of the base and the last of the forest that surrounded them—but to get to that position, one would have to be summoned to the commander’s office first. And that was not normally an invitation anyone would be envious of.

It only took Baze five minutes into the meeting to share this sentiment. Two minutes after, and he was thoroughly convinced that the scene of the forest was much better down below than up top. This was exactly the kind of conversation he was worried about the previous night. If his muscles weren’t just so worn by sex, Baze rather doubted that he would have had the presence of mind to even try and get some sleep. The good news was that for what it was worth, he was not alone to bear the brunt of The Talk. 

Standing there beside him, with the look of a man who wasn’t about to face the ax yet, was Chirrut Imwe, with his shoulders squared, his chin high, and his hands on his hanbo stick. If Baze had never been in his head before this, he would never have understood where all that confidence was coming from. 

Both of them were suspiciously dressed in full sleeves with high necks. 

Behind her desk, the commander stood with her hands at the top of her executive seat, and her back bowed just a little by the weight of the world she was trying to save. “Let’s make one thing clear,” she spoke again after a moment, “you had misaligned during the heat of the battle.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Baze mumbled under his breath. 

“And I assume you understand how much of a risk you have put not only yourself, but your co-pilot and the entire base when that happened,” Mothma continued. “Is that correct?”

Head held high, eyes in contact with the commander’s, Baze said again, “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Strictly speaking, though, it’s a risk that will never go away,” Chirrut piped up. “Every time we go out there in the Drift, there’s always a risk that the neural bridge will break. When and where it will happen is just a matter of luck.”

“As a training master, I’m sure you are aware of the strictest regimen we subject our candidates to ensure that that doesn’t happen,” Mothma argued. 

“And being a training master, I’m telling you that the human body is imperfect,” Chirrut countered. “And by virtue of this truth, anything and everything that a human makes will be imperfect. That’s why there is always a risk of failure.”

“I refuse to see this all simply as a byproduct of bad luck and bad timing, Mr. Imwe,” Mothma insisted, turning to the man. “You need to remind yourself that the co-pilot you chose for yourself has never even finished the full course of the training program prior to his first fight.”

“Which doesn’t explain why a training master can’t seem to beat him in a simple duel,” Chirrut responded. “Victory is not simply about good grades and graduation, you of all should know this as fact, _Commander_.” The jab had been uncalled for, and Baze was startled. His attention snapped to the commander’s reaction. 

He could not tell if he was relieved that he couldn’t read it in her features. 

“When it comes down to it, all that matters is that we know how to fight and we’re not trying to kill each other,” Chirrut continued. “Besides, we aren’t the worst outliers this organization has seen in its time. Baze is an undergraduate and I am a veteran but by and large, both are still connected to the Jaeger Academy which is an important prerequisite to piloting a jaeger. And there you have it.”

“Chirrut,” Baze sputtered in his shock, turning warily to the man who may or may no longer be his co-pilot, depending on whether or not Chirrut has tried Mothma’s patience enough yet. “That’s just too farfetched.”

“And so is humanity’s salvation and yet here we stand.” Chirrut beamed victoriously. 

“If you wish to argue about our chances of winning, then unless it is favorable to the cause, I urge you to step out of my office and find someone else to engage with,” Mothma snapped. “The salvation of humanity is not up for debate— _your_ performance in the fight _is_.”

“Say what you want of it, Ma’am, but I think you and I can agree that it wasn’t all accidents and dumb luck.” Baze spoke quietly. Beside him, he swore he could see Chirrut putting on a smirk for him. “I fell out of alignment, but I recovered. And we did everything you asked of us, we finished the kaiju, we helped Jyn and Cassian, and we did it together. Now you have to admit, for a greenhorn and a has-been, that’s pretty impressive.”

“Impressive,” Mothma agreed, “but not sustainable. Both of you must work on your relationship to ensure that what happened before will never happen again.” The shift in the atmosphere was subtle, but to Baze and Chirrut, it was as loud as an electric shock. “Miracles and jaegers are at a shortage these days, and I urge you to use both wisely,” she continued. “The first item is your business, and I will leave it there. But the second is something I have a say in.” Finally, she straightened up, and everything about her, the neat hair, the white suit, resembled the commander they both knew from the LOCCENT. “Rogue Alpha is presently undergoing repairs. However, we are no longer in possession of many of her parts that need replacing so we must make do with what we have.” And just when they thought that they had the commander down pat, she would surprise them again with the presence of a tiny smile. “I suggest you spend your time wisely by familiarizing yourself with your own jaeger.”

⚠

That afternoon was the first time Baze had been back in the jaeger bay after his first jockey.

He could never have believed that everything would look so different after he’d been inside one of those giants he’d been working on all these years. As an engineer who’d always been stimulated by the workings of a robot, he had always looked at the machines with a quiet kind of excitement that was borderline awe and respect to the fantastic beasts. But now, he reminded himself of a boy watching someone wrap his present so he could take it home and tear the paper free as if he was seeing it all for the first time. 

“They’re stripping her color. I…I made that request, actually.”

Bodhi was there in the jaeger bay when Baze and Chirrut had come down to check on the proceedings. It was the blind ranger’s first time to be among engineers hard at work and the excitement of a new world seemed to make him immune to the sharp acoustics of the underground room. Baze kept him at the corner of his eye as he explored the terrain, tapping and sweeping diligently with his staff. He turned to Bodhi once again—but even so, he couldn’t come up with anything to say. He didn’t know how it felt like to have his jaeger stolen from him just like that. 

“Anyway, they’ve got around 48 hours to finish but, but frankly? I,” Bodhi laughed, eyes still trained upwards as he flung his shoulders up to shrug, digging his hands deep within the folds of his crossed arms. “I don’t, I don’t think it’s possible, this is,” he gestured to the jaeger that looked more like a marble statue from the past with stolen everything than something that had once saved humanity, “this isn’t really repairs anymore, it’s…” He frowned, shrugged, shifted his weight between his feet, “It’s like building something new!”

“And you’re overseeing this?” Baze asked, half-incredulous. 

“What—me!” Bodhi laughed, shaking his head, his nerves practically making his teeth chatter as he grinned. “N, no, I’m not here for that. I just…I just need to ask them to strip the paint?”

“So why are you doing this?” Baze threw in a shrug of his own with his demand. “We’re taking your jaeger from you. This is the last thing you have that connects you to your mother. And you’re giving her away like that?”

“No!” Bodhi protested, turning wide eyes to Baze in shock, head shaking hard. “No, no, I’m not, I’m _not giving her away_ ,” he insisted, half-snarling at a stunned Baze. The frown disappeared when he recognized it. “O, or I, I…I mean Mum stays?” He tapped his temple. “In my head. Sh, sh, she—she’s not…? In the jaeger, she…” He swept an arm to the faded beast. Below her, Chirrut was looking up to one of the head engineers who was explaining their work to the tourist. “She’s not the jaeger. She’s Mum, she…she’s with me, always.”

After that lengthy explanation, Bodhi sighed and whispered to himself, “I’m not making any sense, am I?” He looked up to Baze and Baze almost jumped back at the look of business Bodhi was giving him. “Mum is not the jaeger. I, I admit, I used to think that she was still in there? In spirit? But now I know she’s not but that doesn’t mean anything bad! It just,” he turned to his former jaeger, “it just means she’s not in there, you know? She’s in here,” he pointed to his head again, reminding Baze where she was for perhaps the third time since they met, “and in here,” he pointed to his heart. “She’ll never go away from me.

“I _am_ glad I saw her fight again, though,” Bodhi continued, suddenly retracting and becoming shier. “I mean Rogue this time. That…that was actually the first time I saw her fight from the outside…” And then he fell silent suddenly, head dipping, and Baze noticed that beside him, his right hand seemed as if it was reaching out to an unseen hand, and then pulling back. 

When those bright eyes looked back up to him, Baze returned the gaze. Bodhi opened his mouth, raising his hands in prayer, “I just have one request:” he said. “Don’t call her Rogue anymore. Please. That’s all I’m asking.”

Baze had no reason to look for another option, so he agreed with a nod. And Bodhi beamed back happily. 

“ _Ei!!_ ”

The blast came straight out of Rebel’s side of the bay, stunning Baze and Bodhi out of their quiet conversation. As one they whipped, wide-eyed, to the Caucasian man marching for them, waving a datapad to their direction. 

“Nǐ zhè shì gàn shén me?!” Kay demanded.

⚠

“He,” Jyn choked, snorted, laughed and lost hold of her sentence again while across her, Baze felt his blood gathering at the tips of his ears. “He what? What did he say to you again?”

“I already told you what he said to me,” Baze grumbled. 

“Sorry, mate, but after the last fight, my mind…” Jyn shrugged, looking up to Cassian who served as a part of her seat, one arm slung across her shoulder, the other raising a cheap hamburger to his hungry mouth. She sat with much of her weight on him and both her feet up on another chair. “It’s just not the same, anymore.” Cassian snorted and had to hide his smirk and his chewing mouth behind the sleeve of his jacket. Jyn reached easily for the tissue in the middle of the table, surrounded by leftovers, other empty dishes and steaming cups of tea. 

“Forgive your little sister, Baze, she’s trying her best,” Cassian added, taking the tissue from his co-pilot to wipe his mouth clean. “Besides, I believe she’s in the best position to help you with your heartbreak. Among all four of us, she’s the only other ranger who was sent away from the jaeger bay. Aside from you, I mean.” Jyn started to laugh again while Cassian hid his grin behind his sandwich. The sound seemed only to echo louder in the wide mess hall way past dinnertime, where there was literally only a skeleton force to keep the food warm, empty steel tables all around them and maybe another group of three commiserating over congee. 

Baze sighed and sunk deeper into his arms crossed over the table. Chirrut laughed beside him and laid a comforting hand at the back of his neck. “Be nice to him, my co-pilot’s pride can be fragile.”

“Is not,” Baze grunted. 

“But he’s very excited to be a part of the family!”

Cassian gestured to the deflated ex-engineer with his hamburger before Jyn redirected it to her so she could sift through the layers of meat and greens. “I could see it,” he said as Jyn pried a coin-shaped pickle loose. “So what are you calling you?” He turned to glare at Jyn just in time to see her dangling the pickle between her teeth. “Hey, that’s my pickle.”

“Get your own,” Jyn said through her bite—and then the pickle was gone. 

“We’re still thinking about it,” Chirrut said, smiling. “I really like Rebel Hope so maybe we’ll use it as an inspiration.”

“Jyn wanted her first jaeger to be called Captain Stardust.”

“That joke again, Cassian?” Jyn groaned. 

“We’re open to suggestions!” Chirrut grinned. 

“Wouldn’t you want something to pay tribute to your first jaeger, though?” Jyn suggested, shrugging. “Maybe like Ruby Protector. Or Ruby Guardian. It’s got a good ring to it.”

“That makes us sound like someone’s legal guardian,” Baze said, raising a brow, “or something else entirely.” At which point Chirrut burst out in laughter. 

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t just imagine what I imagined,” Cassian mumbled. In the meantime, Jyn hunted through their leftovers and raised a slice of tomato, dangling it dangerously close to Cassian’s face so that he had no choice but to take it with his teeth, all the while humming out a long, “Mmmm…” like an eager mother. 

Which Cassian echoed, chewing down the tomato as he turned to his co-pilot and said, “I hate tomatoes, by the way. Jyn made it up to him by boosting herself up and kissing him.

⚠

“All jokes aside, I really like the word guardian,” Baze confessed, arms braced on the barrier. They stood high above the jaeger bay, atop one of the streaking catwalks accessible through a discreet doorway, well away from the crash and boom of engineers at work and the judging eyes of those who’d been left below. He may no longer keep the job description but the secrets of the trade, which included hidden shortcuts, was something they could never take from him. “But not Ruby. I think we ought to let her rest with Rogue.”

“How about World?” Chirrut chirped, smiling at the shadowed space across him, back all straight. “We could be the Guardians of the World.”

“That’s two words too long, I don’t think there’s enough space in the registration form for that,” Baze chuckled. “And World Guardian doesn’t have the same ring either. Maybe we ought to keep things local.”

“Crystal Guardian? Guardian Force?”

“I’m pretty sure that one is protected by trademark laws,” Baze laughed, rising to press his palms on the metal. 

“Do trademark laws even matter when the world’s coming to an end?” Chirrut wondered out loud, brows curling tight. “They should be honored to let us have it.”

“They’d be honored if we pay them for it. The world may be coming to an end but greed is forever,” Baze said. Down below, he could see a number of engineers crowding over Rogue Alpha’s chest plate on suspended cranes, a single voice issuing reminders for those above and below. “Here it comes,” he said. 

“What does it look like?” Chirrut asked in one excited breath, hand flying from his staff to perch on Baze’s fingers. For all that they may be now, Baze still burned at such simple contact. But he peered at the work, his eyes catching at the aerial claws moving in to attach their magnetic clamps to the metal. He’d never seen what the insides of Rogue Alpha looked like either, and perhaps, in a way, he never did. Rogue Alpha belonged to the past now, and this was just an unnamed jaeger, waiting on its pilots to make a decision. 

Baze turned to Chirrut and said, “Think I’ll just let you see it in the Drift.” Hearing his co-pilot speak so confidently of it, Chirrut beamed.

⚠

They met up with Bodhi early the next day in the landing pad after his morning exercises with his buddies. The pilot came running with a string of apologies for making them wait. That was when Baze handed him a thin sheet of metal the size of a very large document, painted in Rogue’s colors and emblazoned with an ambigram of _rα_. It was the last piece of thing they could save from the old jaeger, something they’d stayed up late for, so they could rescue it from the rest of the junk.

It was, however, perhaps the best souvenir an ex-ranger could ask for. Bodhi started to sob when his hands touched the metal, tears flowing as he pressed the gift to his chest, like it was his long lost child. “Thank you,” he said, sniffling loudly. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…”

He went away, mumbling the same word over and over under his breath. 

“Jed was never that way with me,” Chirrut said late that night, trapped completely in Baze’s embrace and his leg slung over both of his while the man peppered him with kisses—neck, shoulder, ear, head, cheek, nape—and rubbed his nipple playfully. Between his own hands, he held the tin doll of Ruby Force Baze had made once long ago, fingers sliding carefully over her swoops and cuts in fond recollection. They lied on their sides, back to chest, the crack of his ass flush against Baze’s groin. “When he was gone, he was gone. I think that was the hardest part for me,” Chirrut continued. “But then I think it would have also been difficult to hear his voice in my head and not see him. I think that would have made it harder for me to keep living. I don’t know how Bodhi does it.”

“I don’t think anyone does,” Baze said. He parked his chin over Chirrut’s shoulder, like a hook, and continued, “But he was a man who finished a fight on his own, hours after he lost his co-pilot. That’s not something you go through without changing.” Digging deep into the crook of his neck, Baze kissed him there, and said, “I’m just glad the same didn’t happen to you. You have enough trauma in your life as it is.” Chirrut moved suddenly; he loosened his embrace slightly while his lover reached blindly for his desk to return his doll. 

After that, he lied on his back, eyes trained to the top of Baze’s head while he peered at him, hair cascading down, past his shoulders to Chirrut’s open chest. He looked at him softly, smiling. “That’s why I chose you as my co-pilot,” Chirrut said. “‘cause you know how to carry the burden with me.” Baze broke into a grin and sunk into Chirrut’s waiting lips, disentangling himself carefully so the kiss didn’t slip. 

When they parted, Chirrut was suddenly laughing. “So, time to get back to work, then.”

“Work?” Baze wrinkled his brows.

“The commander’s not going to be happy when she hears that,” Chirrut said. “Didn’t you remember her instructions? Both of us must work on our relationship.” Baze guffawed in response while Chirrut continued with happy snorts. “The jaeger’s ready soon. It’s high time we did our homework, too!”

“So what’s lesson number 1?” Baze asked, thoroughly amused. “Steering lessons? Like this?” he asked as he took Chirrut’s hand, and wrapped it around the man’s own cock, sliding it up and down the shaft with his own guiding hand. Chirrut burst out with a great laughter, legs kicking out so Baze had to pull him back. “Tell me when you get the hang of it so we can go to lesson number 2.”

“Is there an exam?” Chirrut cackled, settling into the rhythm, his weight against his lover. “And if I fail it, how many times can I retake it?”

“Fail?” Baze laughed. “Don’t you have any faith on your co-pilot?” Right then, Chirrut stopped, and Baze waited. He watched him closely while Chirrut turned back to look over his shoulder, a pensive look on his face. 

“Faith’s a good word,” Chirrut said.

⚠

“ _All right, Faith Guardian, this is it—your moment to shine!_ ”

They could still hear the locks booming into place when Kay’s voice cracked through their helmet. Baze flexed his shoulders, the motion rig system moving with him more fluidly than he last remembered and it felt good. It felt amazing to be in his own battle armor, one that was fitted exactly to him, painted in glossy black and slashed with blood red. Beside him, Chirrut was dressed the same, moving his head left and right then around. 

“ _Neural bridge calibration’s rolling out nicely. Remember, kids, this is just for sanity, so we’re not looking for anything special. Handshake commencing in 20, 19…_ ”

Baze turned to Chirrut and grinned. “Got any fancy quips up your sleeves before we go in?”

Chirrut grinned at the as yet dark window in return. “I’ll try but looking at you, I’m only coming up with a lot of bawdy ones.”

“You’re still blind as we speak.”

“I don’t need my eyes to be turned on by you, baby.”

“ _…10, 9, 8…_ ”

“Want to hear a joke?”

“I’m not sure I do,” and Baze was surprised to know he meant it. 

“Well, you’ll hear it, anyway!”

“ _…2, 1._ ”

The vacuum fell over his ears again, shape-shifting into distant sounds, voices, each one drawing closer and closer still until the images were there in his face, his brother was in his face, his school was in his face Chirrut was in his face, slamming his fist into another kid’s face, slamming his fist into the kaiju’s face while Baze screamed and whooped and jumped, his voice silent while others took over and said:

_Pilot out of alignment._

_Initiate plasma cannon!_

_Both of you must work on your relationship._

_Like a marriage proposal?_

_Shame it was you at the other end of his stick._

Baze burst back into the Conn-Pod, awake by the time her lights blazed to life and her HUD flashed before him. He could feel the entire system’s heart beating in his chest, its power flowing out to the tips of his fingers. He felt stronger than an earthquake, ready to beat down a typhoon. 

But more than anything, all he wanted to do was to laugh. 

That ticklish itch bled out to his right, coming out in chuckles and uncontrollable giggling. Eventually, he became infected with Chirrut’s delight, copying him but not long before it came out in great spurts and then he was barking in delight, and Chirrut echoed him, pitch for pitch. Their shoulders shook, like mountains moving. The laughter became too much for Chirrut that he had to drop his head and lay a hand across his eyes, all the while, Kay played back in their heads:

_Shame it was you at the other end of his stick._

“ _Uh…guys?_ ” The real Kay came in but no one was listening. Baze, for one, was already howling. “ _Okay, any time you’re done laughing at some inside joke just…just let me know and we can all get started. Okay? I’m gonna go and get some coffee first, anyone want coffee?_ ”


	8. Chapter 8

“OK. Clear!”

She was a gleaming mammoth, an angel descending from the heaven, dressed in polished black all over and blood red in her chest armor, her backpack with the repeater cannons and the reserve energy core, and the spiraling ribbons around her legs. She took the place of the former Rogue Alpha in the jaeger bay whose team, now hers, directed her landing after the successful test run that morning. 

“She’s really striking, that’s all I can say,” he said, breaking the silence. Even the Pons system had been recalibrated for their specific circumstances—otherwise, Baze would never have been capable of standing up there in the jaeger bay, overseeing Faith Guardian’s return to slumber in the safety of the catwalks. Chirrut stood steady as a tree beside him himself, not overbalancing at every step or shouting to hear himself. It was not perfect—there were still occasions where Baze felt like his ears were ringing or Chirrut would extend a hand somewhere to stay upright but by and large, they were workable inconveniences. 

“Will you make a doll of her, as well?”

Baze turned from the proceedings to his co-pilot. The answer was a yes, of course, although not immediate because Baze had to waste time grinning about that night he had described the jaeger to Chirrut using their naked bodies as props. For what it was worth, Chirrut’s own delight broke free suddenly in his face. “Sure,” Baze said, going on like nothing, shifting his weight, the angle of his hips pressed up to the barrier. “I’ll just need a couple of coke cans, the black and the red ones.”

“Then let’s go shopping!” Chirrut chirped. “We’re out of oil, too.” By which he meant their lubrication, which he explained by way of searching for Baze’s hand and letting the man find his hovering one to squeeze it. “And we could use some snacks in case we get hungry during the break.”

“You make it sound like a day job!” Baze laughed. “Like we’re working in a kitchen.”

“It _does_ get as hot as a kitchen, though,” Chirrut said. “Our specialty is sausages, milk and eggs.” 

Baze exploded in laughter, warranting Chirrut to grab him by one arm and shoot up a hand in search of his mouth to silence him but it was all good. Everyone and everything downstairs was too busy to mind them. And Chirrut was grinning brightly, barely able to contain his own mirth. 

He felt his heart swell. Baze allowed himself a second to bask in Chirrut’s glow before he dove in like a hawk and caught his smile in a kiss, albeit one that was clumsy. Chirrut had to fix it for the both of them, hands around Baze’s jaw to keep him still. 

They parted with a smack, the same grin dancing on both their faces. Baze felt giddy with inspiration. “So let’s go on a date,” he said. 

The idea of which seemed to confuse Chirrut whose brows fell suddenly, looking uncertain. “A date?” he repeated carefully. 

“We’ll be on call!” Baze assured him, shifting closer to take both Chirrut’s hands in his, trapping him from one side of the suspended walkway. “Come on, we missed Christmas.” That had been the day he got in a Drivesuit for the first time in his whole life, and the days have been a blur since. “Even Jyn and Cassian found time for themselves. They kept in touch with Kay the entire time. We won’t be far, we’ll be within half an hour of the base. We’ll be back before 10,” he promised. 

“And what are we going to do?” Chirrut asked with a jumping brow. 

“Just…go around.” Baze shrugged, turning to the Guardian to catch up with her progress. “There’s the night market. We could have beef noodles.”

“Beef noodles,” Chirrut echoed. 

“Do something illegal,” Baze went on, facing Chirrut. 

“Illegal! _You?_ ” Chirrut laughed. “The only illegal thing _you_ can do is illegal parking!”

“You know that’s not true.”

“So proud of that time you had sex on the beach,” Chirrut purred, smirking. “Let me remind you, Baze Malbus, we can’t afford to be caught.”

“We won’t be caught if we don’t make a mess. I’ll keep it all in my mouth!” Baze beamed when Chirrut guffawed, throwing his shoulders back over the barrier. He always felt a swell of victory in his chest whenever he could get the man to laugh so loudly. He tightened his fingers around Chirrut’s just in case. “But you have to be quiet.”

“Baze Malbus, you have no idea,” Chirrut gasped, “what you’re asking for. If _you_ blew a dead man, he’d be springing back to life!”

“And that’s _my_ problem?” Baze chuckled. 

“Why are you saying these things?” Chirrut asked, his smile and his gaze directed to the space next to Baze’s ear but he took them both all the same. He put his weight on the barrier to get comfortable. “Between the two of us, you’re not the one who gets turned on by these things.” That was true. Between the two of them, Chirrut was the one who had a knack for mischief. 

Baze would never know these things if it hadn’t been for the Drift. And if it hadn’t been for the Drift, he wouldn’t know to say these things, or about the power that came with being on a jaeger, _having_ one to call his! He felt powerful and unstoppable; he’d beaten down a monster, he could do anything! “And you’re still asking me that question?” Baze crooned, smirking slightly. “I can’t get enough of you, Chirrut Imwe.” It was a confession that sounded simpler in his head, but when spoken, came spilling out with his heart. 

Chirrut’s lips stretched out brightly, his eyes twinkling at those words. Baze felt his breath go. He pressed up to Baze, hand on his chest and his jaw as they kissed. 

Peeling away from the bigger man, Chirrut finally said, “And for that, it’s a yes.”

⚠

Cassian had barely recovered from the clap and the, “Buenos tardes, amigo,” before Kay was already attaching, “this seat taken?” to his greeting, leaving the ranger no choice but to catch up to the LOCCENT officer. By the time he had looked up from his datapad, Kay was already taking the space beside him, tray in tow, sliding the silver dish with the leftover potatoes over. “Umm,” Cassian began dumbly. “Yeah, no…yeah, sure. Hey man.”

“Where’s Jyn?” Asked between scoops of rice and braised pork cutlets. 

“Outside, she’s on the phone with her father,” Cassian replied watching the man demolish his dinner. After a glance to his datapad, he added, “Well, you’re down here late. It’s almost 8 o’clock.”

“7:48,” Kay confirmed. 

“What’s going on up there in the LOCCENT?”

“Nothing—and that’s the worst part.” Kay dropped his spoon, his food tray half-empty by now, to face Cassian to his right. “You and Jyn doing anything special tonight?”

“Depends on your definition of special but no,” Cassian shook his head, “as far as I’m concerned, we’re not. Are you?”

“Yeah,” Kay gestured to the serving counter, “I’m having cake. It’s my daughter’s birthday, San Francisco time.”

“Wooow, congratulations to her,” Cassian said. “So, what’s wrong?” he asked. 

“Well, I’m not with her, that’s one,” Kay said. Then he sighed, and that was it, the warning before the dam broke. “Something doesn’t feel right,” he began. 

“In the base?” Cassian pursued when Kay stopped. “Or are you talking about the apocalypse?”

“Those things are still at status quo,” Kay said, scraping all the potatoes to his tray before he frowned at the silver dish he’d just emptied and set aside. “No, it’s all this…” he swept his hand vaguely over the dinner mess, “it’s all this sitting around, the dates, the…” He flung his hand up. “The everything. Think about it, there hasn’t been a kaiju activity in _days_. Like the calm before the storm and I don’t like it.”

He and Jyn were just talking about that the last time they went out together. Cassian had shared Kay’s sentiments as they were strolling around the old Pier-2 Art Center. Jyn had consoled him, in a way, saying that at least they got to go on another date before the world ended. “You think it’s going to be a bad one,” Cassian said to Kay. 

“They’re all bad ones, Cassian,” Kay corrected. “No, it’s not about how bad it’s going to be, it’s _when_. Look at it this way, the night of the day we got here was our first attack. All right?” Cassian had no choice but to agree. “So we’ll call that day 1. After that, how long until the next attack?”

“Ahh—”

“Three days! That makes it day 4,” Kay spat before Cassian could answer. “Three and one. How long’s it been since?”

“Umm,” Cassian’s mind raced in the speed of panic as he added one digit to another. “Four days.” He felt a distinct spark of pride there for getting the answer in under a minute. 

“That makes today day 9, five days since day 4. See the span increments,” Kay chopped the table surface with his hand, moving towards Cassian’s side, “by 1 after each attack.”

“You think there’ll be one tonight.”

Kay slammed his fist on the table, startling Cassian to a jump, then threw his hands up and mumbled, “I don’t know.”

“Then what the hell was that all about!” Cassian cried. 

“ _Maybe_ , maybe there’ll be one tonight!” Kay replied with equal gusto. “I mean mathematically, it checks out. One, four and nine, these are square numbers, it’s a sequence, there’s a pattern.” He paused. “Actually, there’s really no correlation between kaiju and square numbers aside from the fact that they each operate on patterns _but_ , if you think about it, it’s been too long since the last kaiju attack.”

“You gotta help me out here, man,” Cassian said, shaking his head. 

“Okay, okay, let’s put it this way.” Kay cleared his throat, shifting to face the confused ranger better. “We know for a fact that the kaiju are still out there somewhere and we know for a fact that they attack after a span of a couple of days. Now, supposing that the probability of a new kaiju attack is at 0% on the day that the last kaiju attacked and that the probability increases by 20% each day after—”

“That means there’s a 100% chance a kaiju could attack tonight.”

“And if the weather forecast tells you there’s a hundred percent chance it’ll rain tonight, even if it’s dry out at this moment, what do you do?”

“You bring an umbrella if you’re going out,” Cassian said. 

Having made his point, Kay spread his arms wide.

⚠

“Well, someone took their time.”

Cassian honored Jyn’s jab with a quick smile as he pushed the steel door leading back to the apartments shut. The night was cool, with just enough wind to muss up Jyn’s hairdo and enough clouds to hide the moon and the stars. A good day for sitting out at the top of a building all the same. 

Jyn was there on his favorite place before him, legs dangling in the air, facing forward. Cassian parked himself next to her, elbows on the concrete barrier where she sat. “Got stuck in math class,” he said, looking out to the dark ocean beyond, a vast nothingness that existed only where the light hit it and when the waves folded in. “How’s Galen?”

“He’s all right. Says Hong Kong’s pretty much good to go.” Jyn scrunched up her nose. “Sounds like he’s coming down with the flu, though. What’s up with the math class?”

“It’s Kay,” Cassian sighed. “He thinks there could be a kaiju tonight.”

“Wha, said who now?” Jyn swung her gaze to her co-pilot. “Mothership texted him?”

“More like the ghost of college past.” Cassian scratched his head. “He was saying things about…probabilities and patterns and square numbers. Adding up days and things.”

“He’s serious? Did he say how likely it is?”

“Think the general idea is that the longer it takes for one to attack, the more likely it is to attack.” Cassian didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell Jyn about the examples Kay had made. They were one part confusing and one part, well, alarming now that he thought of it. “It’s been four days since the last attack. Before that it’s been three.”

“No shit? That’s it?”

Cassian shrugged, looking up at Jyn. “I’m not the one who graduated with double degrees.” He turned around, putting his back to the barrier and his elbows back on it. “Kay asked me if we were doing anything special tonight. He’s making sure he’s got someone on hand when it comes. Where the hell are Chirrut and Baze at anyway?”

“Out,” Jyn said, searching for the second ranger team in the ocean. “Baze asked me for directions to the closest night market. Guess they’re out celebrating. I’m sure they’ll be along when it happens.”

“You think it’s possible?” Cassian asked. “You think there could be a kaiju tonight?”

“Beats me,” Jyn said. “Maybe, maybe not. I have an easier time predicting my period, that’s for sure.” She raised her shoulders high. “But what do I know? I’m not the one who graduated with double degrees.”

⚠

It was everything that Baze had promised Chirrut: a night market that was within 30 minutes of the base, a relatively small one that wouldn’t take anyone more than an hour to get around, with a noodle shop at the corner, right next to an old but functional, also nostalgic, photo booth.

That one had been a bonus, something Chirrut insisted they take advantage of. “Next time, you could blow me in there,” he jested to Baze rolling his eyes as they waited for their pictures to fall through the chute outside. Chirrut insisted that Baze keep it, mostly for obvious reasons, and that he would get a different souvenir for himself which Baze would help him find. Baze was more than happy to be of assistance. Chirrut was in a great mood, and he was keen to keep it up. 

The night went by in a series of quick bites, colorful lights, overpriced souvenirs, some with dubious quality and sources, stolen kisses and fair games won by teamwork—because one of them was a blind man who wanted to play and the other was a man who could see but refused to play without the blind man. For their efforts, they won even more cheap mementos and a stuffed toy half the size of Baze which gave them a good idea of what a cat might look like if it was a rabbit with the genes of a care bear. They decided instantly it belonged to Jyn. 

Baze hung onto it and the rest of their purchases as he stood outside, phone on his ear. Kay answered immediately, and he greeted him with an equally impatient, “Well?”

“ _Negative, still negative. Chirrut’s with you?_ ”

“Yeah, he’s just…” Baze turned around and looked up to the purple-on-black signage of the adult shop he stood by, just across a stall that sold anti-kaiju charms and kaiju bone powder of suspicious origins. “Inside, waiting for change. But we’ll be heading back soon, we’ll keep calling.”

“ _Okay, keep your line open, too. I’ll call you if anything comes up._ ”

“Roger that, thanks.”

“ _Okay._ ” Kay hung up. 

Baze frowned at Kay’s contact details on his phone screen when the door opened and Chirrut stepped out. He slid and reached with his hanbo stick as he went down the short steps carefully, a discreet black bag on hand. “Kay sounded tense,” he said, turning to the shorter man as he pocketed his phone. 

“We should start heading back then, we can’t afford to lose him to a heart attack,” Chirrut replied with a serious expression. And then, with a fast grin, he raised his loot. “I got what I need!”

“Merry Christmas indeed,” Baze mumbled. Chirrut laughed at his lack of emotion while Baze stirred him by the elbow away from the night market, down a dim and quiet street with a wall to one side and on the other, a series of shops catering to a particular niche that they may or may not belong to now. “I can sense the excitement to hit the sack from here.”

“ _You’d_ be excited if you looked inside the bag,” Chirrut replied, tapping carefully at the sidewalk. 

Baze raised a brow at Chirrut before he pulled at his hand and took a peek at its contents. “Almond, vanilla and aloe vera. That’s two too many oils.”

“The lady was very convincing. They have a promo on oils, see?” Chirrut had a self-satisfied smile on his face. Baze stared at him, waiting for him to explain. “Left side, back pocket.”

If Baze didn’t know any better, this was just an excuse for him to grope Chirrut’s ass on public. But he reached for it, anyway, and found a pair of packets, each cut to a square, inside. “You bought condoms?” he asked.

“Are they condoms?” Chirrut grinned. “I didn’t know, the lady just gave them for free.”

“Love Socks, condom with ticklers for enhanced pleasure,” Baze started to read one of the packets out loud. Chirrut laughed. Baze himself had broken out to a grin as he continued, “Hubba Hubba Banana flavor, regular size. Well I guess we know who’s wearing this now.”

“You would like that!” Chirrut cackled. “What’s the other one now?” He stepped towards Baze until he bumped into his arm so he could cling to its elbow, peering at his feet as if he could see with his eyes. 

If they hadn’t only been out in the city, Baze would have already kissed him, this boy trapped in an adult’s body. As it was, he could only restrain his affections in a smile while he switched the packets. In one blink, that affection withered and he blanched, choking on his spit. 

Which was a bad move to make around Chirrut who seemed only to be excited as a result. “What!” he demanded, squeezing his arm, a beam on his face. 

Baze glared at him, but relented with a heavy sigh. After another second, he muttered, “It’s a cock ring.”

“A what?” Chirrut practically shouted. 

Baze burned. To save himself from the embarrassment of having to repeat himself, he shoved the toy to Chirrut. “Here, figure it out,” he grunted. Chirrut’s brows dipped sharply as his fingers groped at the circular shape, trying to make sense of it. 

But then a slow smile soon took over his features, and Baze knew he was doomed. “Is this a _cock ring_?”

“Not too loud!” Baze snarled but Chirrut was already laughing, loud _ha!_ s that bounced against the walls and the shop windows with their tiny signages. “Chirrut, get ahold of yourself!”

“Mmm, I think I’d much rather I get ahold of _you_ ,” Chirrut raised the black ring, “with _this_!”

“You’d like that,” Baze groaned, snatching at the toy only to miss when Chirrut tucked it deftly in his palm. “Since when were you into toys?”

“Since I realized I could get you _into_ one?” Chirrut beamed victoriously. “How can you be sure _you’re_ not into toys when you’ve never even tried them?”

“I’m not wearing that tonight!”

“I promise to let you suckle until you’re satisfied.”

“Like hell you’d stop me,” Baze spat. “Let’s just throw that away, you don’t even know if it will fit.”

“You’re talking to a blind man who uses his hands to see. Trust me: it will.” Chirrut raised the toy again. “Look, it even has a diamond stud! It’s a _wedding_ cock ring.”

“Chirrut, stop!”

Chirrut might not have stopped if there hadn’t been a specific request to keep their voices down from someone above, formulating it in loud shushes, angry words and a rather obscene suggestion of where they could take their cock ring to. Baze, flushing, had barely stopped Chirrut from replying with an apology and warm gratitude. 

“What!” Chirrut laughed over the sound of someone overhead turning up their TV volume. “That sauna place sounds nice, let’s check it out!”

“ _...erdome is finally shutting down._ ”

They stopped suddenly—hands, heart, breathing, everything. It felt like cold water pouring over them, the calm voice of a woman reporting the downfall of the organization they had staked their lives on. “ _...in favor of the Anti-Kaiju Wall, otherwise known as the Wall of Life. Rights to the shatterdome will be handed over to the local government and it is believed that parts of it will be used to construct the wall here in Sydney Harbor._

“ _Thousands of jaeger loyalists have surrounded the Government House to protest this decision but the governor remains steadfast with his decision. Others have hailed this as a nationalistic action that should have been done long before, while others still are worried about the Wall’s effects on international trade and commerce._ ”

“Baze, breathe,” Chirrut hissed, one hand flying to his arm the moment he clenched both his fists. “Let’s get out of here. Kay’s waiting for us.”

Baze might have said something in response if his jaws simply haven’t been held hostage by his frown. He felt Chirrut’s hand crawling down his arm for his fingers so he gave them to him, and held him tight in turn. 

He led Chirrut away from the street without another word said. Chirrut pulled his hand free, but only so he could entwine their fingers together as he marched next to him.

⚠

“I remember when Kay was recruiting me back to the cause, I was skeptical,” Baze began as he looked off to the night and the ocean, sat on the thin strip of sand they called a beach where the wind blew hard but he and his co-pilot were a stubborn pair. “I said everything the rest of the world was saying. It’s useless, the PPDC’s dead. But then I met you, and Jyn and Cassian and Bodhi. All you people sacrificing so much for a lost cause, without losing hope. And faith.” He turned to look at Chirrut beside him who smiled proudly at the inclusion of the last word, nodding happily as he looked out ahead. “You join a world like that, you start to see why. And you start sacrifice so much more than you signed up for, but you wouldn’t be able to sit with yourself if you didn’t try to give back. And then you hear people talking about the deadline and…” He trailed off, tossing his hands up, forearms on his knees.

It had been Chirrut’s idea to take a detour to the beach, exactly for this purpose: so Baze could make sense of his own thoughts instead of keeping them all in like a bottle ready to blow. The drive in the borrowed car had been quiet, and fast like blood rushing. A blind man didn’t need a pair of working eyes to know something was wrong. 

“It just gives you a sense of having wasted your time. That you’re just here to take up space until it’s time to back off. And when you lose everything, no one…” Baze shook his head, eyes on the black horizon, “No one cares. No one cares how hard you fought, even when you sacrificed so much, it doesn’t even balance out with what you gained. Because you believed in it and they didn’t but all that matters is what they say, not what you shout.” 

“But can you blame anyone?” Chirrut asked, when Baze spoke no more. 

He had his brows knitted together when Baze turned to him, with his head tilted to a side as he thought aloud, “In the end, aren’t we all just doing the same thing? Holding on to what we have, in whatever way we can.” He pulled his head straighter as he continued, “We may be the ones at the front, but you can’t tell me that everyone else has stopped fighting. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be building jaegers, or walls. Selling anti-kaiju charms, taking care of our people, our assets for a future that might exist beyond this apocalypse.”

When he reached out to Baze, he knew where to find him. His hand landed like a bird on his arm, present but not heavy. “It is only that some have taken the fight elsewhere, but they have not given up the hope yet. So I won’t give up on them, and neither should you, Baze Malbus.”

If the stars, the galaxy, the universe hadn’t somehow conspired to put Chirrut Imwe together, Baze couldn’t say what might have become of the world by now. It would have been a far darker place, he thought, with cold suns and no meanings. No faith, no hope, no spirit to fight. Everyone turned to jaegers and walls to save them from the kaiju but Baze knew now more than anything that if there was anyone who would truly save them all along, it was Chirrut Imwe, and his unwavering faith in mankind. 

He kissed him, diving straight for his lips. Chirrut met him in surprise, catching his rough jaw with a hand to guide them both. Not for the first time, Baze could hardly believe that somewhere in the past, he might have done something so good-hearted to deserve this kind of reward. 

But for the first time since he joined the war effort, he finally truly understood what it was he was fighting for.

⚠

There was still about half an hour left before the clock struck 10.

Kay seriously considered giving his rangers a curfew of 9:45 just to get their asses moving back to the direction of Pier 0 stat. But, he didn’t do that. 

He only stared, in a stormy mood, at the dead weight that was his phone lying along one of his many consoles, arms crossed, feet up, lips on a perpetual frown. More than an hour since he sat next to Cassian, their scanners were still bereft of any kaiju signature and the suspense was driving him mad. 

“Confirm blank signature,” he called back to one of his staff hunched over his own, tinier display. Kay watched him panic for a millisecond, probably switch out of his daydream, before he called the requested information in a couple of keystrokes. 

“Confirming negative signature, no bogie in sight,” the younger man reported. 

For one solid second, Kay considered repeating his request in case the first findings were inaccurate but for the sake of keeping things from getting even more awkward, he only replied with a begrudging, “Carry on,” before he returned to his own business. And maybe the younger man back to his own daydreaming. 

The dead phone was in his sight again. He tapped it twice on the screen to coax it awake but when it failed to produce any notifications from certain individuals of special interest, Kay gave into his frustration with a guttural groan before he threw himself back to work—which was by and large non-existent and if otherwise, was non-urgent. He set his scanners sweeping wide for the hundredth time that hour—sound, heat, everything—and swept them himself when they failed to produce any notable disturbances, even if it was a ferry. He went through a calibration check of each of his instruments, short of resetting them all in the off chance that he may need to clean up some non-existent cache or message queue. 

That all lasted two minutes—and then he was back to staring, at his phone at the map. 

It had Taiwan at its center, Kaohsiung to be specific, with a special dot to its left so they could keep track of the Hong Kong Shatterdome in case it decided to move. And because he could and he was an obsessed genius, he called up the historical data pinpointing the kaiju’s target cities and where they had been stopped. 

Kay had a moment to panic when he traced the absent line that started at Shanghai and went down to Okinawa. From there, it was anyone’s game where the third line might lead off to but he thought there was a conservative 90% chance it could connect to Taipei up north. 

He would have his answer in a blip, followed by a series of it, each one coming faster than the last. The entire LOCCENT came alive with his squeaking wheels when he dragged himself to the blinking scanner, practically empty save for a red dot moving southwards urgently, marked red as a _Category IV_. 

“Shit,” he hissed, pushing himself back, fitting his mindset into this new development. One part of him wanted to scream out loud that he was right, there _was_ a hundred percent chance for an attack tonight! But the other was human, and trying not to freak out. “Confirm bogie signature—Category IV located 2.4 kilometers west of Ryukyu Islands. Coordinates broadcasted.”

“Checking!”

“Checking,” two people called out. 

Kay ran his own checks himself, picking up its speed among other running data but with one hand sweeping over his phone to send out another call to Baze. His sleeping face, with his mouth gaping open, was underscored by a green bar that indicated that the call was being attempted. And then it turned red, with a voice reporting that Baze was out of the coverage area.

“Double _shit_ ,” Kay snarled. He might have thrown his phone at long last if the second voice from earlier hadn’t reminded him that there were more serious things than a ranger gone rogue. 

“Kaiju signature confirmed. Category IV heading east southeast at 220 kilometers per hour.”

Kay turned back to the voice. “Sound the alarm. Inform the commander and get the Rebels up here now.” The entire LOCCENT rang out their affirmations. 

And then the sirens rang, everyone shifting to their battle stations while Kay brought up the forecast model to track the kaiju’s progress. He picked up his phone again to make another attempt, this time at Chirrut. 

He almost dropped it when his eyes zeroed in on the one line glaring red, like his hypothetical track leading from Okinawa to the third city in Taiwan. “Oh shit,” he said.

⚠

In five minutes, they would head back to the base.

“You just want to have sex with me on the beach,” Chirrut teased. 

“If you’re obsessed with that memory, we could schedule it if you want!” Baze said, short of sighing in exasperation. “And if I were to have sex with you on the beach, I can tell you for sure that 5 minutes wouldn’t nearly be enough.”

“That is either the most amazing compliment I’ve ever received about my appeal or the worst insult to my lovemaking skills.”

“You decide,” Baze said, slipping out his phone from his pocket to check for any messages again. “Still no signs of Kay.”

“We still ought to head back in a few, though, new toys notwithstanding.” Baze sighed heavily. Chirrut grinned. “I want to show you something!”

“Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure I’ve already seen all there is to see about it.” Baze smirked, bringing his knees up again while Chirrut took the sandy floor across of him, minding his balance, having left his walking stick next to Baze. 

He turned around to face him, arms at his sides. “Even this?” he asked, moving his feet apart. His arms came up after, and then they glided, sideways, as he turned to face his reaching hand, knees bending in gentle progression. 

The rest of the Taichi Chuan forms were familiar to Baze, but only because the answer to Chirrut’s question was, “Yes. But only from afar.” Baze had once made a career for himself as Chirrut’s number one awkward stalker. 

Chirrut beamed, perhaps remembering that scene from the Drift, metamorphosing from one pose and then the next, in movements that reminded Baze of water and air or a combination of both. The rush and sigh of waves, the song of the breeze served only to direct all his attention to the man he admired and adored and loved. 

“I’ve always loved doing this on the beach,” Chirrut shared, bending low sideways. “There is just something about performing this in the face of raging sea and wind that calms me, and makes me feel as though I belong with nature. I am one with the forces of nature, and there is nothing that I should worry about…” He trailed off suddenly, his hands falling and stopping. 

“Chirrut?” Baze asked, climbing up to his feet but the man only dipped his head, brows tight in concentration. When he moved, it was only to stop Baze’s approach with a hand. Baze waited with bated breath as he turned his head to one side, as though he were listening, trying to catch a whisper in the wind. 

“Sirens,” he said. 

“What!” Baze gaped—and that was when he heard it: the slow rise of a distant moan, coming and going in waves. He set his phone alight again, searching for messages or missed calls but there was none that appeared. 

He had no signal to begin with. 

“ _Shit_ ,” he roared, jamming his phone back to his pocket. He reached for Chirrut who stumbled towards him, his own hand out. “Come on, we gotta head back to the base now!”

⚠

“ _Engage drop,_ ” Mothma ordered.

“ _Engaging drop,_ ” Kay echoed. 

“Kay!” Cassian called, pushing down the button that opened the line from the Conn-Pod to the LOCCENT. “Did you get in contact with Baze and Chirrut?”

“ _Not yet, the calls keep getting dropped. We’ll keep trying._ ”

“Copy that.” Cassian switched off, snarling at their luck. “What are the chances we’ll get to pick them up along the way?” His hands reached out to the other instruments surrounding his side of the cockpit, priming them for the upcoming battle as one would aboard a classic Mark III. 

“The last time you talked to me about probabilities and statistics, it’s brought a raging kaiju out of the depths of the sea,” Jyn said, replicating his movements on her side of the helm. “Listen, luv, they’re big boys, they’ll know what to do. Until then, we’re gonna hit it hard where it bloody hurts.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“ _Cassian, Jyn,_ ” Kay came in. “ _Remember, your priority is the defense of the Miracle Mile. No heroic dreams now, you hear? We need you all back in one piece._ ”

“We’ll do what we have to do,” Cassian replied, hand on the mic switch, “but we’re not gonna let that kaiju take one step closer to the door.” He stepped back to Jyn’s side, clenching his right fist. “Release for drop.” In one swing, he and Jyn slammed the release button.

⚠

There was a truck that stalled on one lane, and then several others had decided to abandon their vehicles in the middle of a green light and finish the rest of the journey on foot.

Baze cursed his luck the moment he twisted into this scenario where he was instantly trapped by other drivers committing the same mistake. Overhead, the sirens calling for immediate evacuation went on which did nothing to improve Baze’s mood or his headache. “Try again,” he said, unclipping his seat belts. 

“Call Kay,” Chirrut instructed. His phone lit up at the command. 

They could hardly believe it when the line played back a ringing tone in response, barely audible over the din of a city in a panic. It was cut after barely three rings, replaced by a voice that demanded, “ _Chirrut, where the hell are you?!_ ”

“That’s a funny question to ask a blind man.”

Baze let out a victorious cry. 

“You’re on speaker, Kay.”

“Kay, what’s happening?”

“ _Almost a decade in the business and you’re_ still _asking me that question?_ ” Kay spat. “ _There’s a Category IV heading your way. Where the hell are you, anyway? You said you’d be within half an hour of the base!_ ”

“We were, but we didn’t expect to lose phone coverage in a fucking beach. And now we’re stuck in traffic!”

“ _Get your asses in here stat, we need you for back up. I’ll send a jumphawk over to fetch you, get clear of the pedestrians!_ ”

“Copy that.”

“ _And turn on your location so we can track you._ ”

“Kay, wait!” Chirrut stepped in. “You said the kaiju’s headed to us?”

Several heartbeats passed in treacherous silence as the implications of the news dropped a heavy anchor down their guts. 

“ _Yeah,_ ” Kay said. “ _It’s heading for Kaohsiung._ ” _Them._

Baze felt his blood freezing over while Chirrut responded with a final, “Copy that,” before the call ended. He jumped back to life when he saw Chirrut fumbling to get loose of his straps. By the time the man had freed himself, he was pouring out all of his own jittering panic into a single punch that broke the door open. “Come on!!” he cried. 

He got out, reached back to help Chirrut climb over the seats and led him by the hand past stuck cars and over their hoods. Several motorists reacted with angry beeps and violent words. 

Chirrut hopped down after Baze and chased him into a narrow street pointing to the general direction of _away_. They ran for a couple of corners still, until the sound of traffic was almost absent under the curtain of the sirens and Baze could find time to curse their luck again and punch a wall. 

“Shit, I don’t know where we are.”

“Baze,” Chirrut called to him. 

“I know, I know, I’m turning on my location.” Baze pulled out his phone and switched it on. 

“Baze!”

“What?!” Baze snapped at Chirrut, whirling at him. 

“Do you see the night market?”

“What?” Baze asked but he turned around still, peering past the dark line of a wall that would lead them out to a lighted street that hadn’t been empty last he drove past it. But that gave him a window to see past another block. “Yeah, I think I do.”

“The adult shop,” Chirrut went on. “It has a fire escape. I could hear it from the inside. We could get up there to wait for the jumphawk.”

Directions like that had no need for affirmations. Baze grabbed him by the hand and they took off as one, barreling down the dark stretch of the narrow street, bursting into another, barely dodging a motorcycle and the two ladies on it just as the air blared with a deep horn. 

Rebel Hope—Baze could tell its sound from just about anywhere. “Chirrut, come on!!” he cried over the rage of the kaiju’s roar and the slam of something against another. The public sirens rang on uninterrupted—it would be some time still before it was silenced—

But there they were in the night market, dashing past empty stalls, lights left on, shopping bags and cheap wares scattered in their paths. He thought back briefly to Jyn’s stuffed toy left at the backseat of the car. 

And then the adult shop was there, its shutters down, its signage lit, its corner empty. “You first. Be careful,” Baze said, practically lifting Chirrut up the fire escape, watching him trip and stumble over his blindness, his feet, his bearings as he scaled up the steel steps. “I’m right behind you!”

“Hurry!”

“Keep going!” He waited until Chirrut had cleared two levels and then he was off, half-running, half-jumping, feet slamming on the old metal which creaked and groaned under his weight. It was a short trip up the five-story building no matter that Baze felt like the twists and flights were unending. 

Chirrut waited for him at the top, stepping back when he clambered out of the stairwell, scanning the night sky. He could find no signs of the jumphawk waiting for them. 

But he could hardly miss Rebel Hope’s searchlights, sweeping in the darkness as she turned to face the kaiju slithering up around her. Fists flew, the jaeger dodging and blocking the jaws aiming for her neck. 

“Come on, Jyn and Cassian!!” Baze roared at the top of his lungs just as the jaeger dropped out of sight and the kaiju rushed forward. He couldn’t believe how clearly he could watch the fight from the city!

“Should they be this close to us?” Chirrut asked, frowning at his feet. “I could practically hear them as if they’re just down the block!”

“Chirrut, get clear!”

Baze pulled the man back by his arm, holding onto him as the beating wind descended closer to their location, first as lights and then gradually, and finally, as a black jumphawk camouflaged in the night. Chirrut hung tight to his hanbo stick as it eased itself down the ceiling. 

The door flew open. They were running even before they saw Bodhi waving them over with an urgent, “Come on, come on, get in!!” Chirrut was the first on board, finding his seat by his own blind efforts while Baze hoisted himself in and Bodhi turned to face the radio. 

“LOCCENT, this is Bodhi Rook—”

“ _You got ‘em?_ ” Kay answered instantly. 

“Yes!” Bodhi cried and Baze could practically see his eyes shining from his voice. He frowned, shook his head and tried again, sitting up straighter as he leaned closer to his radio. “I found the Guardians,” he said, “and we’re about to take off. Requesting air support for return flight.”

“ _Air support will be provided, get those boys home and fast!_ ”

“Roger that,” Bodhi said. At the end of the call, he clipped the radio back to its holster and ran through the multitude of switches surrounding him before he found the navigating lever between his knees, gripping it hard. “Strap yourselves in and hold on tight!”

The jumphawk tilted, one side first and then the other until they were on air and twisting to the direction of the base. Baze twisted around to catch the battle over the ocean. Rebel had her cannons out, one of them blasting off one blow after another. 

“Baze, you have to sit properly.”

“Is that the 10-mile line?” he asked Bodhi, whipping to him. “Has it always been that close to land?”

“Um, yes?” Bodhi spoke uncertainly, looking at an external mirror at his side. “Ten-mile lines aren’t supposed to move—oh _shit_ , take cover!” He banked hard to the right.

Baze felt his weight drop sideways before he heard the thrum of a passing plasma shot over to his left. Chirrut hung on tight to his own straps as Bodhi righted them all, diving for another big twist. The air shrieked as they charged forth.

It took Baze a full beat before he recognized where it came from. “Shit, that’s a kaiju.”

“Incoming!!” Bodhi roared, yanking the lever hard to the left. Baze saw the night sky blaze for a second. 

And then came the crash—a jarring force that came from everywhere, the last thing they felt on air. The momentum had flung all of them forward, saved by the sheer tenacity of the straps holding them to their seats and Baze had yet to recover from it before they were already freefalling down the ground. He heard the wind moaning, felt the air spinning even as he closed his eyes and hung into his guts. 

“LOCCENT, this is Bodhi Rook, we’ve been hit! I repeat, we’ve taken a hit and we’re coming down hard!!”

He couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t make sense of what the world had come to, why there was so much shaking when they weren’t in the Conn-Pod but he struck out his hand and he was there, grasping him, latching onto him with all his worth. And that at least Baze could understand, like a center of gravity that balanced him. 

“Baze, Chirrut, brace for impact!”

The ground came up to meet them with a terrible crash that killed all senses. The hand slipped from Baze’s grasp. He blacked out before the final collision exploded at his side.


	9. Chapter 9

Baze was lost in the Drift again. 

That, he thought, was the only possible reason why he was in darkness, again. Why he had memories of the date, the market, the beach as if they’d been so recent. He was in another fight against a kaiju—a Category IV headed for Kaohsiung that smacked them senseless. There was all that shaking, and then the nothingness that followed. 

And then Chirrut and Bodhi beckoning to him as always, speaking his name in different urgencies and inflections. 

_I’m coming,_ he thought, tensing his shoulders slightly, getting ready to carry the jaeger’s weight again. 

“Yes!” Bodhi cried. “He’s moving, he’s talking!”

“That’s my Baze,” Chirrut said, laughing with relief. “Thank Heavens…Baze! Get out of there, we have to get to the base.”

“Baze, you have to fight! You have to get on a jaeger.”

But he was already on a jaeger. 

“Baze, open your eyes.”

Baze did, and the image he saw clashed with the illusions of his muddled brain. Instead of Rogue’s Conn-Pod bleeding red, he was contained in a dark, tight space that seemed like it was filled with nothing but chairs. He gasped with a start, mind coming fully awake, working fast to remember what had happened to Faith Guardian. 

He remembered the beach. The flight. The kaiju’s scream, the night glowing blue for a heartbeat. He remembered Rebel Hope standing in the ocean, in full battle form. 

Baze jumped again with another cry, this time a little louder. He was still strapped to a harness, completely safe as far as he could tell. 

Bodhi was near him, one foot in the room, both arms out. His eyes reminded him of clocks, round ones. “Take it easy,” he said, speaking steadily. Baze could see past his hunched form that Chirrut was behind him, waiting with his staff. “You’re still strapped onto the chopper. Just push the button and you’ll be free.”

Baze hung onto every word he spoke like they were monkey bars and he was crossing to a cliff. He concentrated on locating the right button and depressing it with the right amount of pressure. He didn’t expect it to give—but relief washed off the shock that struck him like lightning. Bodhi reminded him to take it easy as he shrugged off his straps and carried his weight on his own feet. Firm hands grasped him around his forearms. 

The world was bright beyond the confines of the fallen chopper. Chirrut reached towards his stumbling form blindly, relying on Baze to grab him as the bigger man finally stepped down the ground with him. The chopper gave a creak and a bounce of relief. Baze was immediately by Chirrut’s side, gripping him firmly by his arms, checking for any broken bones with practically enough pressure to leave a bruise. “You okay?” he rasped. 

“Not a scratch,” Chirrut assured him, smiling at his arm. “Our pilot made a spectacular landing. Given the circumstances.”

“I wasn’t able to dodge the last plasma shot,” Bodhi explained from the back when Baze captured Chirrut in his arms, wrapping him in relief. “We lost our tail. This was the best I could do.”

The best he could do was an upside landing that scraped across the concrete as it skidded towards the wall and crashed against it on the side. Baze’s side. Even from where he stood, Baze could tell that Bodhi had done a calculated maneuver, taking note of the risks—and that was how he could still stand on his own. 

He thanked him—had been about to. The kaiju’s scream had removed the words from his mouth, drawing him around in a tight spin to stare and gape at the monster rising over the rooftops of oceanside Kaohsiung. Rebel Hope silenced it with an angry left hook, the impact exploding in the quiet night, but this time, Baze had forgotten to rejoice. They were standing too close, too close to the city for comfort. That was how they were caught in the crossfire. 

Bodhi whirled and let out a cry at the sight of the kaiju, flinging his left hand up. Baze didn’t wait for him to remember that he was no longer in a jaeger when he grabbed the same hand and yanked him back, away from the monster fight. Chirrut was already running at his co-pilot’s instruction. 

“Where are we going?!” Bodhi demanded, confused. 

“Away from the fight, back to base!” Baze said. He had to throw his voice over the roars and bangs of the fight, resisting the urge to glance back and take stock of it. There was a crash of mass on mass, the sound of several cars erupting all of a sudden, honks going off in a frantic rhythm. “Keep running!!” he roared to Chirrut who’d been the most distracted of the new noises. His feet had almost tripped onto each other. He had to press his hands on his ears just to keep a straight line. 

Baze kept his own eyes on him until a low bang moaned and consumed all other sound. He heard it again drawing closer to them, the light shifting at its approach so that he had no choice but to look up and see a misshapen junk of a truck spinning overhead. 

Aiming for Chirrut. 

“ _Chirrut, duck!!_ ” he screamed, abandoning Bodhi as he bolted down to the frozen man and shoved him to the ground with the entirety of his weight. The flying metal swam past their lying forms. 

Baze had bit his tongue in surprise when the massive object crashed several times along the route it tumbled on. His ears, his head were filled with the impact. He dared only to look up when the bangs had been replaced with an ugly groaning between metal and concrete as it slowed down, spinning lazily until an oddly shaped barrel had turned around to face him. Rebel’s empty cannon. Baze felt his heart skip a beat. 

He didn’t want to turn and see what the kaiju might have made of the jaeger. Bodhi let out a surprised, “Fuck!” and Baze took that as his confirmation. 

“What happened?” Chirrut gasped, looking up from the concrete. His cheek was grazed where it had met the ground. 

“Something bad,” was all Baze said, picking both of them up. “Are you okay?” He turned again to the man, restarting his earlier inspection but there was nothing to be gained from it. Lights flashed and dressed Chirrut—both of them—in stark whiteness, piercing Baze’s eyes like a needle. He turned away, even when Bodhi exclaimed something jubilant. 

“Malbus, Imwe!!”

Baze turned carefully. Chirrut was already scanning the area for any one point he could lock his attention to. The patter of heavy footfalls drew closer until their bulky silhouettes allowed Baze to see through his momentary blindness. 

One of the troopers grasped him, dressed as always in a complete black regalia, while another one approached Chirrut and the rest filed past them, guns pointed down, an angry voice chanting, “Move, move, move!!” like the pied piper. “Get on the jeep, Sir. LOCCENT’s waiting,” said the trooper closest to him. 

“Go,” Bodhi cried behind him. “I’ll catch up!”

Baze’s gratitude fell on the Strike Trooper when he clapped him by the sleeve, and then they were running, after Chirrut and his own escort, the latter slipping at the back of the car, the former getting behind the wheel. Baze jumped after his co-pilot; he’d barely gotten his balance sorted before the whole thing was already careening as it spun and hurtled back to base, tires screeching against the pavement. 

Somewhere in those panic-induced moments, Baze had found the time to check on Chirrut’s graze on the cheek. His mind was still stuck in this moment when they burst into the Drivesuit room and changed into their battle armors. Even as he locked his feet into the platform and turned to face Chirrut, his eyes zeroed into the cleaned wound illuminated under his co-pilot’s helmet. It was a close call. It wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for the kaiju. If it hadn’t been for the kaiju, Chirrut wouldn’t have almost—

“Release for drop,” he said through the mic before his fist landed beside Chirrut’s on the button between them. 

For the first time, he couldn’t wait to be done with all of it—the flight down the jaeger, the neural handshake, the entire ascent up to the open mouth of the ground and then up to the skies, heading for the battle. 

“ _Rebel Hope’s all out!_ ” Kay came in, breaking Baze out of his trance. “ _Stardust is shot and they’ve only got one staff between them and Interceptor. You gotta get to ‘em in t-minus twenty!_ ”

“Jyn, Cassian, get out of there now!” Chirrut cried through the radio, hand on the button that opened the line between both jaegers. 

“ _Not a chance, Chirrut,_ ” Cassian snarled, breath heavy. “ _We let this bastard go for one second and it’s done for the city._ ”

“Cassian, you are not in a fit state to continue!” Baze snapped—at the same moment that the cables released them and they descended to the ocean for a heavy splash. He watched his HUD shift in response to the water contact, their proximity to the battle and in that case, to mortal danger. 

No words were shared, just a blaze of a thought that sparked like synapses in the neural bridge that told them to _run_. And then they were bolting down the ocean, past the beach, giant feet crashing against concrete and abandoned cars, kicking up walls and signs, anything that came in the way. The Miracle Mile had been breached—there was no other way than to take the fight to the city. 

“Rebels, get out of the way!!” was Baze’s only warning before they were diving for the kaiju and crashing into it, lashing their arms around its torso. Its roar filled the Conn-Pod, practically devouring every other warning sound that rang from the collision but Baze and Chirrut held fast while their momentum took them past the limping Rebel Hope, down into the mess of traffic. Neither had expected the impact of a rough landing coursing past the kaiju’s flab and muscle to blow them back and off the monster as it plowed through whatever was unfortunate enough to be in its path. For their part, they landed once and then again, rolling on and on until they’d spent their velocity. Baze felt as if they must have crossed over from one district to the next. 

A grand number of things seemed to have come apart as a result, if they weren’t broken yet. Each one screamed for Baze and Chirrut to take notice, important-sounding names joining the fray of sirens and red lights while both pilots groaned and shook the nausea off, tried to bring the world back into focus. They heard the kaiju screech and looked up. One small part of them did cheer up at the sight of its bristling form because then, they were sure they weren’t seeing double yet. 

But it was as useful as bringing a bread knife to a cannon fight. Everything else was terrible—the city swept clean by the efforts of both giants, the black skies pulsing with scattered lightning, the enraged kaiju most especially, with its three arms, its short legs, its split lips, long jaws and beady eyes of hate. If a beetle and a ladybug could ever be put together under a mutating ray, this was the result. One of its lower arms, once attached to the side of its pregnant belly had been torn free completely, the gap it left behind leaking slowly in luminous blue. It stood unsteadily with one injured leg but by and large still functional. 

Baze and Chirrut waited for it to come barreling at them, limbs crashing and kicking at the earth, before they drew their left arm back, elbow jabbing at the air to trigger a command, like an old rifle being cocked.“ _Single-shot cannon,_ ” came the OS’ acknowledgement, echoing the same vector image and its name on the display as plates shifted and peeled back. The HUD came up with a targeting screen, flashing green as soon as their newly reassembled arm—with the muzzle jutting out of the palm of a three-fingered claw—had aimed at the approaching target. The kaiju responded with its own plasma cannon, a shining blue bead that seemed to be growing in its mouth. 

Baze had barely gotten an urgent, _Shit!!_ through the neural bridge when they were already pulling their arm back, riding on his and Chirrut’s impulse, half-turning with the force. The shot missed and landed on some unfortunate building that had survived the skirmish until then, bursting upon contact with a spatter of bioluminescent blue. Not even a second had passed before the structure was already groaning under pressure, and what felt like the pain of the spit burning and melting through its skin. “Acid spit,” Baze grunted. “Really—?”

The world came crashing down on them in a cacophony of metallic impact and wild shrieking. The Conn-Pod went red again as they hit the ground hard on their face. Chirrut pulled their left arm back again and aimed for the broken skin next to the kaiju’s belly while the kaiju persistently bashed their right shoulder in. The OS informed them that this was a bad idea. 

“Hang on, Chirrut!!” Baze roared, hoarse with panic. He set the wound alight once, twice, each blow stretching out the open flesh and carving deeper into muscle and blood vessels and whatever else was in there. Not a great amount of pressure was relieved from their ruined shoulder when they finally managed to convince the screeching kaiju not to fuck with them. 

It was just one of the occasions Baze was glad Chirrut was his co-pilot; as soon as they were back on their feet, they yanked their shoulder backwards and set it back into some workable place. The pain was like a knife jab, putting tears in Baze’s eyes as he and Chirrut cried out. A couple of Faith’s tinier parts had fallen off her socket as a result, down in a rain of junk. 

“Right shoulder capacity reduced by 12,” Chirrut reported, biting back a groan as he reached for the series of switches overhead, moving fast while the kaiju was still out of sorts from its own pain. “Shutting off high level safety checks. It’s too noisy as it is!”

“Same with the left hand,” Baze responded, watching the the HUD’s speeding warning about the potential effects of further contact with the corrosive kaiju blood. “We probably shouldn’t do it, again.”

“ _Probably_ being the operative word.”

Baze turned to his co-pilot who grinned at him.   
“You thinking what I’m—”

He warned him with a finger. “Stop. Right there. Before I— _ugh_ , it’s already in my brain.” Baze snorted, flexing both their shoulders. “Let’s finish this bastard before your jokes kill me.”

“At least you’ll die laughing!”

They raised their weapon, targeting screen lighting up in green, and fired a shot. Baze couldn’t begin to imagine what sort of matter kaiju these days were made of to survive a direct hit with just a scratch. Once upon a time, one well-aimed bullet was enough to do it. 

Now they had to try again and again while their target, angered, let out a roar and charged at them, no matter that each projectile landed with a tiny splash of blue. They were like false promises, each one giving the rangers hope that this blow would do it, if not, surely the next. Or _maybe_ the next. 

They never did find out if it would work—by the time the kaiju had crossed the halfway mark, both frustrated pilots abandoned the effort and lunged at the approaching monster, claws coming together for a single fist which they threw overhead as they leapt up over the kaiju’s stooped form. They smashed it at the bald crown, sending the alien creature down on its face to the earth. 

This time the kaiju didn’t wait to get up, throwing itself upon the stunned jaeger who blocked both its higher arms with all two of theirs. Survival went down to the perfect combination of luck and speed; the third arm attached to the kaiju smashed a fist right at their appendix which brought the weakened jaeger down to its knee, an unfortunate position until they used it as a leverage to jump up and smash their shoulder up the kaiju’s solar plexus. That had the desired effect of being released, with both fists soon flying one after the other. They landed on bones, muscles, fat, wound, the kaiju retaliating in much the same way except with three opportunities to smash and grab and kill. 

Thoughts blazed past through the Drift—they had to do something about this, kill the upper right arm to imbalance the kaiju, that would leave the lower arm to deal more unwanted surprises, kill the last lower arm to balance the fight but they didn’t want a fair match, they wanted to _win_. 

The last punch flew off its mark when the kaiju came at them with a cry and all its rage flying at the jaeger in the form of a mutilated hand aiming for their Conn-Pod. Baze cried out a warning to no effect—they felt the blow on their heads shove them back to a wall which crumbled at their weight. Panic flashed for a hot second, memories of Jed and Ruby’s last fight the next, then Baze and Chirrut were racing each other, as if for the bragging rights of coming up with the plan. Chirrut grabbed onto the kaiju’s wrist while Baze aimed for the thin tissue that connected the limb to the socket. 

“Hold on!!” Baze cried and let loose his cannon. The hand jerked and quaked, the arm tensing at pressure of the pain and the shock, the combination of which pushed the kaiju’s palm deeper into the helm, causing it to give and the glass to crack, like a headache slashing over their eyes that burned and bruised. Chirrut yelped, dragging Baze down when his knee dropped slightly but they held on. 

For better or for worse, the plan had worked. All that shaking and pulling had caused the kaiju to tear free from its own arm, shaving one side of it clean of nuisances. Baze could still feel their right hand shaking—with relief, excitement, terrible thoughts. Bad memories, fresh pain. He had to stop himself from looking at Chirrut again, at the graze on his cheek, when they flung the disembodied limb away. 

“ _Guardians, Conn-Pod breached by 21-percent!_ ” Kay cried through the radio. 

Baze ignored that comment when he reached for the mic, leaving Chirrut to pull out the repeater cannons hiding in their backpack. “Kay, where are Jyn and Cassian?”

“ _They’re back here._ ” Kay hesitated for a heartbeat. “ _Rebel’s back in the bay for some quick work. So just hang in there._ ” If the engineers could make it work, Rebel Hope would be back out there to fight with them, which was not a prospect that Kay endorsed but they had no choice. 

Baze didn’t like it himself—he’d never heard of any jaeger going back out there after a few hasty repairs—so he refused to acknowledge the command. At least no one could say that he had agreed to the plan, although he wouldn’t reject it either. Couldn’t. The HUD flashed green, the repeater cannons ready to go. 

They blasted them at the swaying kaiju, streaks of plasma slicing through the cold air to pierce at its thick hide like a thousand fiery needles. The kaiju roared, bringing up what was left of its arms to hide its face, exactly like a cowering animal. Baze took one step closer, and Chirrut took the next, both of them moving easily so that they didn’t overbalance with the shots they were firing. 

Neither expected the kaiju to throw down its guard to spit at them, the glob of blue practically camouflaging with their own attack. In an instant, they shifted their stance and dove away to the right—but even so, the kaiju had caught them at the left shoulder. 

And the pain was blinding, like stinging heat washing over them, paralyzing their arm and their neck, their breathing momentarily. The HUD blinked red at the damage, great numbers flashing on the screen. Baze couldn’t remember crying out loud, tried to do it but couldn’t get his voice to work. 

Kay was the only one they heard—a late warning. By the time that they had realized what it was, the ground had come up after a short flight towards another side of Kaohsiung. Baze cried. He barely registered the blades of a jumphawk tumbling past his outstretched arm in the midst of the chaos within the Conn-Pod. The silence that fell only lasted too short for comfort. 

Baze wasn’t ready yet when the kaiju had reappeared, landing on their legs, pulling the left one out of alignment. He roared, the pain cut short with yet another one driven straight through their right cheek. Chirrut caught the next one before it landed on anywhere important which left the last arm hitting clumsily along their side. Baze felt a keen temptation to try again with the cannon but at the rate that the jaeger, the kaiju and the fight were going, he doubted they’d get anywhere at all. Rebel Hope herself had lost her ammunition with only one arm and a bad leg to show for it—

“Baze!!” Chirrut cried. 

“I know!!” Baze felt a spark of irritation at Chirrut for pointing out the obvious, as if they hadn’t shared a brain. They were back where they’d started, back where they’d crashed and seen Rebel Hope’s arm flying in the air. 

Baze turned to his side and just as he and Chirrut had prayed, it was there, abandoned by its own pilots. Reaching for it was difficult, it was just beyond the tips of their fingers, their left arm too damaged to be stretched out completely but they persisted, inching closer and closer even as the Conn-Pod warned them that their fuel was leaking from a hole punched through their side. 

Perhaps, even that was a source of inspiration for the both of them. As soon as their fingers had finally gotten hold of the metallic limb, Baze dragged it to them and held it like a broken spear just when Chirrut yelled and shoved the kaiju up and off. They’d counted on the monster to come back down on them, right where the torn metal would be waiting for it. 

For once, at long last, the plan had worked. The kaiju fell with a shriek cut short, the impact coursing through the broken arm to Baze and Chirrut’s own. The monster’s weight was ultimately what had carried it through Rebel’s arm. Baze and Chirrut flung the startled creature off them, flying back up to their feet after the path had been cleared, almost toppling over when their left leg failed to hold them upright. That was a problem for another day, after they’d done with the kaiju. 

Reaching for it, they lined up the cannon’s muzzle to its great wound and fired out a shot, and then another, each round coming faster and faster and digging deeper and deeper into and around Rebel’s arm until the kaiju’s screams had gotten shorter and thinner, disappearing soon beneath Baze’s own cries. 

They didn’t expect the arm to explode, though, ripping the kaiju wide open. Baze realized they must have hit its fuse when they fell crashed back and landed on the beach with a sharp gasp each. They stared up to the HUD in silence, reprimanded for spending all their operating fuel on something so petty as revenge. 

“ _That’s enough,_ ” Kay said, sighing as if he’d been trying to reach them since they started overkilling the kaiju. “ _Get back to base. Debrief at 20._ ”

⚠

It was raining by the time the jumphawks had gotten to them. Faith Guardian was already too weak to move on its own. Baze would have wished that Bodhi had been one of the pilots to come and fetch them but he’d been forced out of active service for the night before the trauma of saving Baze and Chirrut’s lives might make things worse for him. Strangely, Baze thought back to the first battle he’d witnessed in Pier 0. Cassian and Jyn were parading down the landing pad, the promise of a bright tomorrow on each their smiles. Baze and Chirrut had never received that kind of welcome back. Baze could no longer imagine what the world looked like when such a thing was still possible.

He was barely present during the debrief, held at the clinic for the sake of convenience, and that of the PPDC’s very own pilots. If Baze had been asked any sort of questions, he couldn’t remember anything he might have said as a response. He knew only that his leg hurt. His shoulder hurt. His head felt like someone had mistaken it for a bell, and it felt difficult to breathe because of a pain on his side, no matter how many times the doctor assured him that there was no bruise, nothing broken. Even when it felt tender to touch. 

Chirrut was gone from the clinic—Baze didn’t check, he just knew. By the time he had crossed the front steps, the nurses had all started to realize this in some form of mild panic. They couldn’t find Chirrut in his ward, one of them said. “Must have escaped,” he almost wanted to say because _he_ knew, _he_ would know. But he didn’t. 

He went on instead to the apartments. 

He moved like a ghost, or someone possessed by it. He was not known to be a quiet man but no one would have guessed that if they saw him moving now, up the lift and down the hall. He found his bedroom at the end of his path. 

He turned and reached for a different one, that one across. He knew for certain that it wouldn’t be locked when he pushed the door open. He knew for sure he would not be unwanted after what they were put through. 

Chirrut sat at the foot of his bed, turning with a start towards his sudden visitor, his blind eyes missing the mark. Even then, he rose and let his hanbo staff fall off the side of his knees when Baze strode forward after sealing the door. Arms reached out to each other, lips breaking open in silent relief. 

Baze pulled him close and met him with a crushing kiss, his muscles quivering at the warmth of Chirrut’s mouth and breath, proof that they had survived the worst together. No matter that Chirrut might have been crushed by the renegade arm, or by the angry fist of the kaiju if he didn’t drown in the Drift. These images still flashed in Baze’s head even as they kissed again and again, the next one more desperate than the last, hands grasping and grabbing and scratching. Tearing. 

His shirt came apart in Chirrut’s hands, an example he took on with equal fervor. They had to see each other. Completely. They had to make sure. Baze shuddered again at Chirrut’s hot flesh, the tautness of his muscles, the lines of circuitry trailing up and down one side of him, leading nowhere and everywhere. It revolted Baze and he felt a keen desire to scratch it away, this reminder that life was fragile. That Chirrut was mortal. But he couldn’t stop himself from tracing it and rubbing his rough hand over and over it, this reminder of Chirrut. _His_ Chirrut. 

He kissed his mouth, his lips, sucked at the skin around his jaw, pulling it. Chirrut held onto him, hands spread wide to take him all in, as much of him as Chirrut could, even as he descended to his knees, marking his path, every inch of it, with warm, wet kisses to taste the salt of his skin. He drew a line from his shoulder to his chest, his ribs, his stomach. Baze kissed him under his navel, at the patch of hair trailing down, pulling at his trousers. In his hands, Chirrut trembled sighing while his fingers fell upon his long hair and picked it out of its knot. 

Chirrut followed him down to the floor and they kissed again, parting again and again with wet smacks, hands groping all over. Grabbing his hair, Chirrut yanked him back and Baze yelped, exposing his throat to Chirrut so the man could suck it with his lips. But not satisfied, he moved to the meat of his shoulder and bit it. Hard. Baze cried again but did not fight the pressure. And Chirrut did not let go either, except to look for new skin to bite, and to wrap his arms around Baze’s naked torso like a snake trying to crush him, even as Baze swooned in pain. 

Their union was not one done out of love but out of the need, the desperation to feel and be felt. Baze’s cries had filled the room for every moment that the blind man had demanded to hear him, leaving bruises and marks in his wake, and Chirrut himself had suffered for Baze’s greed which touched and held him too hard too often. 

Everything faded slowly into silence, until there was nothing else to hear but the sound of their own breaths. They laid facing each other, Chirrut tucked into Baze’s embrace where he could hear the steady beating of his heart as he traced the shape of his areola in lazy circles, playing while Baze drew his own lines up and down the slight curve of his lover’s spine. 

“It’s the best music in the world,” Chirrut mumbled groggily, eyes falling shut. “I could listen to it all day. If only we didn’t have a job to do.”

If only so, but they both knew that this was only a temporary sanctuary, a respite that fell between the cracks of the program, a period of time that didn’t belong anywhere, not even to them. Baze thought that it was still too depressing to bring up when they were still caught up in the highs of their climaxes, so he only smiled at his lover’s words, and stroked on. 

Chirrut’s eyes fluttered open, staring into nothing. “I wish I could record this, and play it in the Drift. Like a battle music. An exercise music but for battles.”

“That sounds disturbing,” Baze chuckled. “It sounds more like you want to listen to a horror soundtrack. Isn’t the enemy enough?”

Chirrut grinned at that, his smile like a precursor for words. But those words never came no matter how long they waited. In the end, Baze didn’t need them to be spoken, though. They were co-pilots. And even if they weren’t, Chirrut’s fear was also his own. 

“You don’t know,” Chirrut started again, suddenly, just as Baze was about to speak, “what’s going to happen tomorrow. We have scientists insisting that the kaiju follow an exponential pattern, but I think that’s just their way of trying to quantify something chaotic. Even if we knew when and where to expect them, every time we go out there…” He shook his head. “Not even LOCCENT could help us.”

“I always thought it was the worst place to be when a kaiju attacked,” Baze shared suddenly. “You can’t do anything but watch. In fact, you can’t do anything at all. I don’t know how Kay stands it.”

“He’s something special,” Chirrut chuckled, smiling. He looked up to Baze. “If we die, I want your heartbeat to be the last thing I hear.”

“If I’m dead, I won’t have any.”

“I could pretend you’d live forever, at least,” Chirrut beamed. 

Baze wrinkled his brows at Chirrut’s words, smirking slightly at what he thought was a silly thing to say. He shifted and drew the man closer, locking him in place with a tight embrace, swinging his leg over Chirrut’s for good measure. Chirrut groaned pleasantly, moving his hips to rub their meeting groins, even if slightly. “No one is going to want to live without you, Chirrut.”

“Mmm, that’s flattering,” Chirrut chuckled. “How many correspondents did you survey for that highly accurate conclusion?”

“Shut up,” Baze laughed, swatting him lightly on his ass which tickled Chirrut. He wished they could keep on like this—with endless teasing and aimless jokes. And that the world beyond could save itself for once. He wondered if there would ever be a way, if there was something he could do to make that hope possible. 

“Baze,” Chirrut began softly. “If…if it ever came to—”

“No!” Baze gasped, startled by Chirrut’s sudden words. He pulled them apart to stare at him.

For what it was worth, Chirrut smiled at his interruption. “I haven’t even finished what I was saying.”

“That’s because I already know what it is you’ll say,” Baze said, half-despairing. “And I won’t let it happen.”

“Baze,” Chirrut sighed, frowning. “I don’t want it to happen either. No one does. But if it does—”

“If you die, then so will I.” His words were like a promise. “I’ll find a way to die after you. You can’t convince me otherwise, Chirrut.”

“Not even if I ask you to live?” Chirrut tried again to smile. “If one of us doesn’t survive, I want one of us to see the future that we’re fighting for. One of us has to live long enough to tell the world about us. If I die, you have to be the one to do that, Baze.” He shook his head. “I don’t want us, and our fight to die with one of us.”

“But what’s it all for if we’re separated?” Baze hissed. “It makes no sense! How could you talk about this so easily as if we’re just making plans for tomorrow?”

“Well, aren’t we?” Chirrut asked, shrugging, “You won’t be alone, Baze Malbus. You can always find me in the Drift.”

“But I don’t want to see you in the Drift, I want to see you in my arms!” Baze protested. 

How ironic, he thought, that they were talking about living on, but there was nothing Chirrut could do but to smile sadly. What else could he do, after all? What else could any of them do if it turned out that they couldn’t win, no matter how hard they fought? “I want that, too,” he said, quietly. 

In the end, that was all they could do—make promises. Plans that will never happen. 

Chirrut raised himself as Baze shifted lower, placing a kiss on his forehead before Baze hid himself in the crook of his neck, breathing in his scent to comfort him from their unknown fate. That was how they held each other. 

That was how they spent the night, waiting for the day to break. And the uncertain future to come for them.

⚠

“Yesterday’s attack,” Mothma began, her voice clear in the crisp morning air, “was…unprecedented.” It had just rained that night, and the skies had a distinct clarity that reminded Baze of washed windows, or fresh watercolor. With the sound of the ocean rolling and sighing behind her, he could almost appreciate the commander’s decision to hold the town hall outside, where there was space for everyone.

“The magnitude, the scale…” Mothma continued, spreading her hands briefly before she returned them to her center. “It was the biggest Category IV yet, and we believe it’s only bound to get worse. Because of it, we almost lost both of our jaegers.”

Baze glanced to his left, past Kay and Bodhi listening with rapt attention, where Jyn and Cassian stood next to each other, both dressed warmly. Cassian had his arm slung over Jyn’s shoulders while she was pressed next to him, arms loose around his waist. 

“And unfortunately, we were unable to keep the fight in the ocean.”

He looked at Chirrut beside him next, and placed a hand on both of his atop his hanbo stick. Chirrut turned one of them to lock their fingers together. 

“I won’t go on to tell you about the damages and the losses anymore,” Mothma said. “We’re not here to talk about statistics. No, we won’t waste time on them. When you say statistics, you’re talking about something that happened in the past. But there’s nothing we can do about the past, anymore. We can only move forward, and save the future.

“Today,” Mothma went on, looking at her men, “marks our last day here in Taiwanese shores. Pier 0 can no longer sustain the costs of operation. We will be closing our doors, and packing up.” She took a pause, to let the words sink in to everyone. 

“Come tomorrow,” Mothma said after, “we will be moving to the Hong Kong Shatterdome.”


	10. Chapter 10

The first time Baze had stood on the landing pad, he had been full of doubts of what he was yet to face. No Shatterdome, with only one functional jaeger, and no plans about the future whatsoever. Now that they were finally moving out to a proper base of operations, Baze wondered where all the excitement had gone. He should be ecstatic. In a sense, he was finally going home, but Kaohsiung was many things to him. It was, after all, where his new life started. 

Now he was saying goodbye to it. After he loaded the silver trays, bundled with the cutlery and a bottle of ketchup that missed the first flight out to Hong Kong, onto the jumphawk loaded with the last of the mess hall’s equipment, he took a step back and waved to the pilot and her passengers who would be heading straight for Hong Kong. The others had left him to get started with the next things in the list that needed to be packed. He ought to get going himself, only he’d decided to stand around and reminisce. 

“There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you.” 

Even without turning around, Baze could tell that it was Chirrut who’d found him at long last. There was the rhythmic tapping of his stick on the concrete, and even without that, Baze had felt him like eyes at the back of his head. He was dressed in a warm jacket over one of Baze’s warmer shirts, tucked into his jeans to keep them from sagging. Baze refused to comment on it. This was just one of Chirrut’s brand of jokes. “So you could still walk, after all,” he observed, out of the blue. 

“After the way you took me last night, it’s a miracle,” Chirrut snorted, then struck at Baze’s foreleg with his stick, sharp as an insect bite. Baze jumped, reaching down below his knee. “And people wonder why I don’t help with the load.”

“You liked it!” Baze retorted, rolling his eyes, shaking his head. But he snatched Chirrut’s hand from his stick and pulled it between them, letting their joint hands dangle like an anchor. “I won’t do it again, if that’s what you want.”

“Now that’s not what I was saying.” Chirrut tugged at their hands. 

“Then stop complaining!”

“You’re insufferable.”

Baze might have thought of something to spit back if he and Chirrut weren’t already snickering at one another. He raised their tangled hands to put a kiss at the back of Chirrut’s, returning them to their sides after. “You gonna miss this place?”

Chirrut nodded. “It has its merits,” he said. “But there’s definitely nothing better than a real Shatterdome. And I’m glad we could make it to this one, after all.”

“You thought we weren’t going to make it?”

“It’s a wild world out there. Like we’ve been saying, no one knows what’s going to happen.” Chirrut shrugged. “We can’t even say what’s going to happen the next time we find ourselves naked next to each other.”

Baze laughed, his voice echoing throughout the space. Since their last encounter with the kaiju, conversations about what might and what might not be were never too far from them anymore, but this was the only time Baze could remember laughing about it. He wouldn’t have thought it was possible when he and Chirrut were first making their…contingency plans but as it turned out, even this joke could get old. He may not live long enough to see the next day anymore, but for what it was worth, he’d at least lived long enough to laugh it off. 

“Hey!” Kay’s voice shot through the empty space. “If you two are done being useless, maybe you might want to give us a hand.”

Chirrut cried out a response just when Baze turned to see their mission controller pushing along a pair of delivery carts, loaded with an assortment of cling wrapped equipment. “Okay, I’ll try not to push them down the ocean!”

“We probably can’t afford all that even if we sold your eyes, Chirrut,” Baze chuckled, putting a hand on his shoulder. 

“That’s because you _don’t_ sell _my_ eyes, idiot,” Chirrut laughed as Baze leaned down to press a kiss on his cheek. He nodded, patting him fondly on his grip. “I’ll see you in the apartment.”

“Try not to fall down the ocean on your way,” Baze called out after him, watching him leave. When Chirrut raised his middle finger to him, he let out a laugh. 

“Geez, it’s like you won’t be seeing each other again,” Kay snorted, handing off the heavier cart to the bigger man. 

“You come face to face with certain death, you realize that’s more possible than you think,” Baze said, taking his load. “We’re just making the most out of the time that we have.”

Kay leaned a little to him, as if he were conferring a secret. “You’d make more out of it if you helped out with the move, trust me.”

“That’s what I’m doing, right!” Baze groaned.

⚠

The first time Kay had met Baze after the Tokyo Shatterdome had been shut down, he would never have expected that there would come a day where he would see the man…practically open up like a flower. He’d been sullen then, and friendless. Comfortable in his own silence and only then.

He wouldn’t call the man a social butterfly now, but he definitely wasn’t cracking jokes when they’d met in an izakaya. Back then, he definitely hadn’t seen and felt the fire burning in him to fight and save the world either, the drive to protect everyone he cared about who lived in it even though there was maybe just five of them. He figured this was something that was only possible after a…change of heart. 

Kay considered briefly the idea of sending Chirrut a token of appreciation for enabling this development but decided not to pursue the joke. Especially as Baze might not be all that amused, and he still needed the man’s help to move things along. 

He was already heaving by the time the last equipment had been transferred from the ground to the jumphawk but Baze still had enough strength to move the cargo around, make sure they all fit like tetris pieces. He took it upon himself to issue the all-clear when a breathless Kay had confirmed the items, banging his hand twice on the outside before they stepped back, away from the aircraft taking off. 

“You know,” he gasped, “I knew I was out of shape from all that sitting around and stuff. Plus all that suspense and round-the-clock shifts but I didn’t think I’d be _this_ out of shape!” Kay whistled, wiping the sweat off his face. “Where’s a good gym in Hong Kong?”

“No need to look far, we’ve got our own training room,” Baze said, loading one cart onto another for Kay’s trip back to the ziggurat. He’d even handed them to him as he added, “I can ask Chirrut to help you out.”

“Aw, that’s great! No need to be in good shape when you’re dead.” Kay reached over to clap Baze on his sleeve. “Good thinking, Baze. I’ll see you in an hour, Bodhi’ll take us across to Hong Kong.”

“Can’t wait,” Baze said, raising his hand to Kay’s departing back. 

After that brief conversation with his ex-engineer, Kay was back in emptiness and silence. A creepy kind of silence, he thought as he crossed the length of the former Pier 0. The skies were a gray sleet, there was wind coming from the ocean and all around him, there was…nothing. And no one. Half the activity he’d been used to waking up to was now on its way to Hong Kong if it wasn’t already there, working on the transition between two bases. Most of the doors were shuttered, there was nothing to hear but the creaks of his wheels and his footsteps stomping along the concrete because it was otherwise too quiet if he didn’t. He could almost believe that he was the last person here on this side of Kaohsiung. 

Kay felt nervous and tried to hurry up. There was still so much more they had to do but suddenly, nothing seemed more important than to leave that barren strip of land behind. He barely stopped to pay due respect to Commander Mothma at the base of the ziggurat when he headed straight for the lift and rose to the LOCCENT. Even that room looked like it had seen better days—a lot of the nice-to-haves (as he liked to call it) had been shipped off to Hong Kong and most of everyone else with them to speed up the migration. All that was left were empty sockets, blank walls, a few mission-critical terminals here and there, laid out with no clear pattern except that they couldn’t be disconnected yet, and a red dot blinking along the front of the wide room, where all the main panels were still intact and therefore, still fully functional. 

“Oh _shit_ ,” he hissed, flying to his seat of honor, practically throwing himself to it to watch the red dot’s track along the western side of the Philippines, just skirting its area of responsibility. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” It was a Category IV, said the same scanner, confirmed by another he dragged himself to and another one yet, each reading turning out much clearer than the last given its decreasing proximity to the skeletal base. “Shit!” Kay said again when he thought about all they’d already sent off. He was stumbling all over the board now, sending out command after command, bashing keys, refining his own calculations and prediction models. 

With no one left to order around and no sirens to boot, Kay ended up having to be the one to come bursting out of the lift and running, flailing for the commander to stop in her tracks and turn around with a very appropriate, “ _Commaaandeeerrr!!_ ” There would have been no way for her to ignore him—even if she claimed she didn’t know him, there was nothing in the Pier left to distract her. 

Kay was wheezing when he finally caught her out in the open of the base, hands on his knees, breath thin. He could tell he was making the pair of Strike Troopers who accompanied her uncomfortable but Mothma shrugged them off and encouraged him to speak. So he did, pulling himself up straighter, breathing deeply, as if for strength—

“Bogie detected. Category IV southwest off of the Philippines heading straight for here as we speak.”

“Here?” Mothma echoed, shifting to face Kay, eyes hard with disbelief. 

“Kaohsiung. As we speak,” Kay breathed, “and it’s the biggest one I’ve seen yet.”

Kay could see the trouble in Mothma’s eyes, something only someone who’d worked with her closely would have ever pinpointed. He watched her glance around her, looking up as if to confirm the sighting with her own naked eyes. They had no choice, they had to stop the move and deploy the jaegers—

“Get Hong Kong and tell them there’s a bogie on the loose, then proceed as is.”

“What?!” Kay spat. 

“We proceed as is,” Mothma repeated with no change in her voice, staring Kay in his wide eyes. “We cannot fight this kaiju, we’re not equipped for the battle.”

“We have two jaegers, Ma’am,” Kay reminded her. “And we still have their pilots here in the base.”

“We forewent full repairs, the jaegers are not battle-ready.”

“But the kaiju’s headed for a city with a population of 2.8 million people!” Kay cried. 

“Which is why it is imperative that you alert Hong Kong now,” Mothma responded with infallible calmness that struck Kay like a blow. From the looks of her, too, it seemed like this wasn’t a difficult decision to make. “They will know what to do. We proceed as is.”

It was like talking to a door slamming shut in front of his face. Times like that, training and years of experience taught him that there was nothing left to do but to accept his orders and so he did. Mothma and the Strike Troopers left him to it, then. 

Turning, Kay hurried back and up to the LOCCENT, phone on his ear. “Bodhi! You’re the pilot, right? Great, I need your help.”

Barely five minutes later, Kay was already meeting with Cassian and Jyn, heading for the shuttered doors of the mess hall which opened up when Cassian demanded, “What the hell is going on?”

“Something wicked this way comes. Get inside, we haven’t got much time.” Kay ushered them in, turning back to check the empty base for any onlookers before he pulled the door shut behind him. With barely an introduction to his sparse audience of five, not including the empty chairs and tables and display counters that surrounded them, he dropped the bomb. “There’s a Category IV heading this way from the south.”

“There’s a what now?” Jyn demanded, coming between him and the stunned Baze. “You sure that’s not just some malfunction from yesterday?”

“Last night came from the north, from Japan. This one’s coming from the Philippines. And it’s bigger.” Kay turned to Bodhi. “How many jumphawks we got?”

“Umm…five! Five and we’re good to go,” Bodhi sputtered. 

“Wait just a minute,” Cassian hissed, pulling everyone’s attention to him. “How come you’re telling us all this in the mess hall?”

“Because there’s something he’s not telling us,” was Chirrut’s swift conclusion, staying back from the loose circle, looking like he was talking to his walking stick instead of the people around him. 

So much for being blind. Kay snorted at Chirrut’s observation before he whirled back to the impatient Cassian. “Because this is the closest spot to the Drivesuit Room and you all need to be in it five minutes ago. But Mothma doesn’t know that.”

“What?” Cassian spat. 

“Mothma thinks I’m in the LOCCENT right now, keeping an eye on the bogie and getting Hong Kong in the line while you’re all getting ready to fly out of here, stat.”

“In the middle of a kaiju attack?” Jyn protested. “What, we’re just going to leave this place for the dumps and pretend we didn’t see the kaiju coming? Are we just going to hope that Hong Kong gets here faster than the kaiju?”

“Hong Kong won’t make it,” Baze grunted, shaking his head. 

“That,” Kay sighed, “is the official plan.”

“What!” Jyn gaped, while Cassian spat out something in his tongue, raking up his hair in disbelief. Bodhi pressed his fist to his lips in surprise. Baze shaking his head was, Kay thought, a pretty good summation of what everyone thought of that decision. “But we’re already here!” Jyn insisted. 

“Yes, we’re already here!” Bodhi agreed. 

“The jaegers may not be battle-ready,” Kay confessed, throwing his hands up. “That’s the deal. The commander and I agreed to forego full repairs so we could focus on the move. We did just enough to make sure they don’t fall apart and there’s just enough fuel in them to keep them alive on a sunny day.”

“May not,” Chirrut echoed.

Kay swiveled back to the blind man who seemed to have captured everyone’s attention with his spectacular observation skills again.

“The jaegers _may not_ be battle-ready. That’s coming from you.” In spite of the urgency of imminent apocalypse, Chirrut smiled. “You didn’t say they _are not_ battle-ready. Which means, they _can_ still be battle-ready.”

Kay exhaled, mostly to keep his heart still functional, and nodded. “Yeah. There’s maybe a 50% chance that they can be.”

“Then we’ve got to do this, Kay,” Cassian snarled, whipping to him. “We wouldn’t be able to face ourselves if we gave up now. We can’t just choose when and where we want to fight!”

“Me, too,” Bodhi chirped. “I want to stay and fight!”

“I always figured there was a reason they called us Rebels,” Jyn shared, looking up to her co-pilot.

“ _I_ always figured there was a reason they called _us_ Guardians.”

Jyn sighed and rolled her eyes at the beaming Chirrut. “Really, Chirrut? Five minutes before the world ends and you’re _still_ at it?”

“Trust me, little sister,” Baze stepped in, crossing his arms, “it _will_ be the end of the world when he stops making these jokes.”

“And you?” Kay asked, jutting his chin at Baze, heart in his throat. “What do you reckon you’d do?”

“Me?” Baze shrugged. “I go where he goes,” he said, nodding to Chirrut.

Kay nodded, too, in understanding. Funnily, he thought he was suddenly a bit out of breath. “Okay,” he said, looking at each of the rangers and the former-ranger-turned-pilot in turn. “Okay. So I guess we’re doing this. We’re doing this.”

They were doing it.

⚠

The rest of the plan figured itself out after Baze and Kay had called on a few good friends and Bodhi had insisted that he and four other jumphawk pilots were ready to go to one last battle for the defense of Kaohsiung.

Before Kay knew it, he was already running back to the ziggurat, trying to sort everything into a workable timetable when he saw the lift doors open and one of his officers rolling out a delivery cart loaded with equipment he knew belonged exclusively to the LOCCENT. “Whoah, whoah, whoah, hey, hey, hey! Stop right there, put that down!!”

The poor officer panicked and jumped back just when Kay grabbed at the handle and pulled the cart far from her, much to the wheels’ and the machines’ protests. “I’m sorry, I thought that was next—!”

“These are sensitive equipment, you can’t just roll them around like this!” Kay snapped, backing up to the lift doors parting open at his command. He kept up with the frown on his face and the glare at the younger lady trying to hide under her flinch. “Go look for something else to do! I’ll take care of this.” So she did; she nodded and took off.

While Kay hurried back in the elevator and took a one-way flight up to the LOCCENT which was blessedly (if such was a word he could still use) empty when he stepped back out to it. The first thing he set out to do was to make sure that security was impeccable, at least for as long as he could deploy the jaegers.

That was where his sensitive equipment came into play, acting as a barrier that kept the elevator doors parted wide open and the whole thing practically unusable while he went on to pile more nice-to-haves in front of the door that led to the fire escape. It was a stupid thing to do, Kay knew, and potentially fatal when it came to a point where he would have to escape an angry kaiju but he figured he still had some time left before his chances for survival dropped to a critical level where it was time to panic. 

“Okay!” Kay exhaled to his mic as soon as he landed in his seat again, adjusting his screens to localize all information he needed, him being a one-man army from now on. “Bogie traveling at 268 kilometers per hour, expected time of arrival at the Miracle Mile is 15 minutes. Codename: Tax Collector. Acknowledge, please.”

“ _Copy that, LOCCENT,_ ” Cassian said and Kay whooped. “ _Requesting coordinates every two minutes._ ”

“Copy that, Cassian, I’m on it,” Kay replied, fingers flying.

⚠

This was the first time Baze had ever seen the Drivesuit Room mellow down to a reluctant silence after the last spinal clamp had been locked in place. Until then, the room had always been a flurry of activity to him from the moment he’d stumbled in to the second he would be kicked out to run to the jaeger. All that drilling, all that slamming, the sirens, the steady drone of voices, his own pulse beating against his ears.

He’d never known it to be a dark, vacuous place where echoes could exist, where space could exist. Everyone was closing shop, sealing cases and compartments, sharing last words.

“See you out there,” Cassian said as they clasped hands.

“See you,” Baze replied, nodding. He turned back in time to see Jyn inspecting Chirrut’s battle armor closely, brushing off some dust that might have been caught on his shoulder guard which made Chirrut smile.

She straightened up when she felt his shadow looming at him, facing upwards. Baze smiled. “Good luck,” he said, “little sister.”

Jyn smiled at him in turn.

Each team had disappeared behind separate catwalks that led them each to their own Conn-Pods. It was just as Kay had said, Baze noticed—the cockpit was largely as he and Chirrut had left it one night ago, only the dent had been set straight and the window had been replaced. But as for everything else, they were either simply glued back into place, or otherwise removed completely.

“As long as we don’t fall head first in the water, we’d probably survive the experience,” Baze said, activating the harnesses as he stepped onto his platform. He turned to Chirrut who smiled at him for his common sense. This time, he was the one who reached up to the mic to make the announcement. “Faith Guardian, two pilots on board.”

“ _Rebel Hope, two pilots on board,_ ” Jyn added.

“ _Copy that, Rebel and Faith,_ ” Kay replied. “ _Bogie’s current track puts it at the Miracle Mile in 8 and counting. Engaging drop._ ”

“ _Rebel Hope, release for drop,_ ” Cassian confirmed.

Chirrut nodded at Baze. “Faith Guardian,” in one count, he and Baze raised their fists over the button, “release for drop.”

Everything else seemed to have gone exactly as they had hoped for, with one small victory leading into another. It was just like what Jyn had said before they all parted, Baze thought, about taking the next chance and the next, expecting no victory but racing against time to win all the same. Bodhi came in through the radio just as soon as they’d broken surface. Soon enough, Rebel Hope was up in the air, suspended by five jumphawks, heading for the Miracle Mile. That had been Baze’s suggestion—Mark 3s were lighter than Mark 4s, but the Mark 4s were faster than the Mark 3s.

“ _This is it, guys._ ” Kay whistled. “ _No sense hiding, we’re out in the open now. Just keep your heads in the mission and we’ll do just fine. Guardians, you’re up in 5, 4, 3, 2…_ ”

That was the first time Baze had ever seen the floodgates break open, splitting sideways around the skirt of the jaeger so that the ocean came rushing into the open chute like an eager waterfall, crashing down their feet. It wasn’t all that bad, Baze thought, as far as entrances were concerned. Or exits, depending on their perspective.

Baze took in a deep breath, as if he and Chirrut were going in for a dive, and on their count, stepped out into the wet unknown with all the courage he could muster. One foot sunk into the descending sand and then the other, the water giving under their boot, crashing and sloshing persistently around their steel legs as they fought against the current, trudging onwards. Jaegers were designed, after all, to weather typhoons and turn away kaiju while they were at it. Perhaps, Baze thought, a reminder of its power, of its limitless capabilities, was a good way to start the upcoming battle.

Especially when it seemed that the whole world had left them in the final frontier on their own.

“ _Rebel Hope, coming to position,_ ” Cassian reported. Across Faith, there was a great splash when the Mark 3 had disengaged from her escorts to finish the rest of the track on her own feet. Overhead, the jumphawks scattered to a safe distance from the battle, each calling out their own positions and readiness. Chirrut reached up to the mic issue their own report to LOCCENT, “Faith Guardian, approaching Miracle Mile. Scanners put the bogie at t-minus 3-minutes. LOCCENT, please confirm.”

Baze was seeing the same information on his own HUD, marking the approaching Kaiju and the jaegers coming up side-by-side to each other in dots, lines and tags. Without their instruments, no one would have been any wiser about the kind of creature lurking in the deep; the mirroresque surface of the ocean was otherwise pristine. There was nothing from a mile away and beyond, nothing even from the gray skies, lit up by an obscured sun. 

“ _Kay, Chirrut, we’re seeing the same thing in our scanners,_ ” Cassian said. “ _T-minus 2 and 30 now. Requesting confirmation, Kay._ ” He paused, and they waited for the LOCCENT officer to come in. Baze turned to Chirrut, eyes furrowed at Kay’s persisting silence.

“ _Kay?_ ”

⚠

The last report Kay had heard was that Rebel Hope was coming to position.

And then someone was banging against the door, the barrier of equipment fronting the fire escape jumping at every impact. “Kay, are you in there? Open up, we have the commander with us!” An order followed by three more bangs.

Kay hissed out another curse, but there was nothing else to be done. The jaegers were already deployed and the kaiju was less than 5-minutes from contact. All that was left was to face the angry mob at the other side of the door. 

Which finally gave under pressure, opening up like a tin can much to the distress of the millions of dollars of equipment that were meant to keep it shut. 

“Hey!” Kay shouted, panicking, waving a finger at that face peeking from behind the door. “Hey, hey, be careful with those, they’re worth more than your life and mine!!” It was all he could do to rescue the machines from further damage by pulling them away, as far away as he could from the threat of the door. 

After that, Kay could only stand back and watch the Strike Troopers file in, all five of them, their impressively long guns pointed down to their feet. Just as they’d promised, the commander Mothma was with them, bringing up the rear, hurrying past the open door. He opened his mouth, ready to speak, bringing his hands up. 

“Where are they?” Mothma asked, scanning the barren LOCCENT. 

“They’re coming up to position, at the Miracle Mile,” Kay exhaled, marching to the front after the commander. “The kaiju’s within 5-minutes of them.”

“Did you tell them the jaegers are not battle-ready?” Mothma asked, checking the scanners. 

Kay threw his hands up. “I told them there’s a 50% chance they could be battle-ready,” he said. 

Mothma hadn’t even glanced at him when she activated the mic, leaning close to it. “Rangers, this is your commander speaking. Your orders are to secure the Miracle Mile and ensure that the kaiju does not breach it again. Civilian evacuation is presently ongoing. That is our priority.”

“ _Copy that, commander,_ ” Jyn replied. “ _But with all due respect, we came out here to stop a kaiju with or without conditions._ ”

Mothma spoke again. “Affirmative, Jyn Erso, but I need to remind you, your jaegers are not battle-ready. They are not equipped to full capacity to support you in this fight.”

“ _Then we’ll go down with our ship,_ ” Cassian said. “ _There’s more than one ways to kill a kaiju. We’ll take any one of them that does the job._ ”

A second later, Baze added, “ _If that’s what the captain says, then that’s what the crew does._ ”

Kay felt a chill running down his spine as he listened to what he thought was effectively a death contract. Barely about 15 minutes ago, all they’d all been thinking of was that there was a job they had to do and their contractual obligations—to the organization, to the cause, to their beliefs—prohibited them from backing out. Barely 15 minutes ago, Kay was still imagining an ending where they would all rush back after the fight to finish their packing. But now, with barely any time left in the clock, he realized that the probability of them meeting the schedule to move…was foggy at best. 

Mothma herself didn’t seem to have much more to add. What’s done was done, and there was no one to blame. They didn’t really have much of a choice to begin with. “Bogie detected at t-minus 1-minute,” she said.“Godspeed, rangers.”

“ _Copy that, LOCCENT._ ”

“ _Copy that, LOCCENT._ ”

Mothma switched off the line after, glancing over her shoulder to direct a look on the Strike Troopers standing by. “Get all those civilians underground now.”

“Roger that.” A salute and they were gone, dashing down the fire escape from where they’d come. 

“I noticed that the jumphawks were out of order,” Mothma shared when Kay dragged a seat next to her and began to work on the other terminals, setting up his workstation, racing the kaiju before it appeared. “I should have known you were going to do it, anyway.”

“They wanted to do it,” Kay explained without looking at her, eyes on the colorful displays around him. “They would have deployed themselves even without me if I’d stopped them.” When Mothma didn’t answer, he couldn’t stop himself from turning to the commander in his seat.

He didn’t think he’d seen right at first, but he noticed soon after that she was smiling. 

“Get Hong Kong and the jumphawks in the line,” Mothma commanded. “Tell Hong Kong we have an unexpected situation and that we are delayed indefinitely. I’ll take care of the jumphawks.”

“Roger that,” Kay confirmed. This time, he did exactly as he was told.

⚠

“ _Okay, this is what we’ll do,_ ” Cassian began. “ _Jyn and I will be at the front. We’ll bring the fight to the kaiju and hope that keeps it distracted. You’ve got the targeting system. We’ll take advantage of that._ ”

“Copy that,” Baze confirmed, glancing at Chirrut looking at him. “You ready for this?”

“Is it too late to take a pee now?”

Baze threw back his head and laughed. It was, he thought, the last time he would ever laugh that way again in this lifetime, and he figured it was only right it should have to be because of Chirrut. He turned to the man and flashed him a grin. 

Chirrut beamed back for him. Baze knew then that this would be the last face he wanted to see before he died. 

“ _Incoming!!_ ”

So it was done, that last moment of peace. They turned as one and there it was, a sudden mountain rising up from the sea, water chasing after its ascending form, forced to give up before they even reached its peak. Baze had always thought it was more preferable to fight under the sun, where you could see everything that was happening around you. But then again, a fight in the dark would have the opposite as its own advantage. You wouldn’t be forced to witness the sheer inanity of its monstrosity, for one, and that was information that the mind needed to be properly scared. 

And Baze felt scared—with nothing to shroud its dark scales, he could see the enormity of the problem they were facing. It had a bone drawn across its face, from chin to crown where it broke out to three more paths to fill what Baze supposed was its back. A heavy tail that glowed blue waved overhead, a sure threat on top of the claws and the arms that were a bit longer than Baze’s liking. The rest of it was shaped like a pregnant frog, and hidden under the thrashing ocean. 

“ _Light ‘em up,_ ” Cassian prompted from the radio. 

“ _Single-shot cannon,_ ” their OS replied as they jabbed their left back and rolled their shoulder muscles outward, “ _Repeater cannons engaged._ ”

The kaiju answered the open muzzle with a tight shriek, gills spreading out under its jaw, its facial bone breaking in the middle where there was a wide mouth set with more teeth than anyone cared to count. Baze felt a sparkle of something akin to hope when he saw it—it was always easier to break something that was already split than something that would have to be split first. 

But everything else was terrible about it—its rampaging speed, its weight as it came barreling at them with four feet. Baze and Chirrut didn’t hesitate to fire at it, aiming at its mouth, its gills, its thick hide, probing for a possible opening. 

They almost hadn’t expected Rebel Hope to come in with an earth-shaking crack of her staff across its jaw, diving in from below. The next one smashed onto the back of the kaiju’s wrist as the jaeger whirled, slipping away before the alien creature could bear down the fullness of its rage upon the machine. The air became nothing but the sound of the monster’s tight scream, like cannonball tearing through air friction. 

The next strike wasn’t as lucky as they’d had hoped, caught in the other hand of the furious kaiju but Rebel had managed to spin out again before they were caught in its retaliation. Baze heard Chirrut’s urgent, _Now!_ the moment the kaiju’s back was turned to them, tail swishing with its movement. 

It was a quick target for the Mark IV, single-shot cannon aimed at the root, just anything to cause a tear in the skin, no matter how inconvenient it may be placed. They’d figure something out, Baze thought, as they dove and leaped out of the crazed tail while Rebel Hope engaged the kaiju from the front. Each blow landed with a splatter of blue, carving deeply into the thick muscles bit by bit but progress was slow, not enough to stymie a massive kaiju that had just gotten hold of its attacker, finally. 

Baze and Chirrut had heard it when Cassian yelled for Jyn to look out over the radio, followed by a terrible sound, something that sounded suspiciously like a tear in the fabric, an explosion of static that must have come from when the kaiju had grabbed the right staff and smashed it onto the side of the helm. Baze was crying out Jyn’s name as they dashed down the water, too loud to hear Kay’s own warning, no matter that he was shouting it to Baze’s own ear. 

Too late to avoid the tail which smashed into them like a ridiculous paddle, throwing them straight down into the ocean where they crashed with a painful landing. The impact was like a bullet, tearing straight through their ear and leaving their entire head bruised. Baze practically felt his neck snap; the sounds resolved themselves around him too slowly—the sirens, the OS’ various warnings and Kay’s own. None of them made sense. 

Until the same devious tail had latched onto their left arm—and pulled. Baze felt the metal around his skin popping as it squeezed. They cried. His first instinct had been to pull away in complete futility but that was after Chirrut had taken full control of the Drift and reached out to the thick trunk with their free claw, grasping it tight. 

“Engage repeater cannons,” Chirrut cried, summoning back the target screen that indicated their unfinished work on the tail as target. The plasma beams tore at it as soon as the command had been confirmed, inciting another tight screech from the pincered kaiju which shook and writhed at the striking needles. 

“Hold on!!” Baze roared grabbing tighter around the holograph of the tail slithered around their limb. Somehow, he had a feeling about what was going to happen next. 

But that didn’t mean they were prepared for when it came—the feeling of the earth leaving their feet, or rather, the reverse of it. 

Both pilots had just had enough time to spread themselves out like an eagle before they smashed into a sudden building, the screech and slam of metal on metal filling their ears, before they crashed into the water, drowning out all sounds. They had to fight against the current—of the waves, their emotions, their panic, the Drift—to bring themselves back out, dripping wet. Baze felt something about the colors of the HUD had changed, like looking past a window to the city lights under rainy weather. He tried to shake it off just as he shook off the numbness in his arm. “ _Conn-Pod breached,_ ” was not the kind of explanation from the OS he was expecting and hoping for either. “ _Water detected._ ”

“ _Rebels, Guardians, status update!_ ”

“ _Systems malfunction! Oxygen and cooling system compromised,_ ” Cassian replied to LOCCENT, even as his jaeger rose bravely back to her own two feet, a massive dent on the front side—where they had caught Faith’s flight—affecting its form. “ _We can finish the fight, but we’ve got to do it fast._ ” They raised their staves again, the left one broken with the jagged end at the top. 

“Faith’s hull is compromised, water’s come in,” Chirrut followed after him, flicking switches and slamming down buttons while he was at it. Back out in the sun, Baze could finally see the crack on his side of the helm, like a massive bullet hole where the glass was connected. “Damage is minimal thus far but we’re disconnected from a lot of our subsystems.”

“Re-engaging single-shot cannon,” Baze announced, aligning the muzzle back to the kaiju charging at them. The HUD flashed green for a second, then bled red with a notice that it was offline. “ _Shit!_ ”

“ _Kaiju approaching at t-minus 15!_ ” Jyn cried. 

“Jyn, Cassian,” Baze felt Chirrut tensing on his feet, abandoning his cannon to lend his own muscle to the idea. “On my mark, jump right!”

“ _Sounds fair,_ ” Jyn replied. 

“ _Rebels, Guardians, t-minus six!_ ” Kay screamed. 

“Now!!”

Baze felt like the entire world had come hanging onto his legs when he and Chirrut had dragged the entire jaeger leftwards, out of the kaiju’s way. He felt its momentum tearing past them, sucking him in like a speeding truck but the worst had passed them like a storm. 

“ _Grab that tail!!_ ”

Now it was time to take revenge. Baze couldn’t even say anymore, who it was that had yelled those words, as if all four of them had somehow become one in a Drift. But he reached for the sweeping tail and so did Rebel before it slipped completely past their grasps. He felt the thick leather give from where his arms were connected when the kaiju had overshot past its limits. He only hoped the tail had enough connecting tissue yet as they started to pull at it, putting their weight on their legs to draw its weight in—and up. 

They cried, heaving the whole thing off the water and down the other side of the battle. The kaiju landed with a great splash, shrieking for its downfall, a river of blue trailing behind it—where its tail had once been. 

“ _We haven’t got much time left,_ ” Cassian breathed, flinging the tail away. “ _We’ve got to finish this now._ ”

“We’ll cover you,” Baze said, nodding at Chirrut. 

“ _Roger that,_ ” Jyn said. “ _Initiating Stardust._ ”

That would give them a couple of minutes alone with the rising kaiju, Baze thought, flexing their fists. The HUD was still red from the cannon but Baze needed to get close to the target first before he could do anything about it. 

Bracing themselves, they took off, even with legs protesting, like they were running on knees and sockets that no longer fit. They weren’t as spry as they used to be; Baze could tell just from the feel of the metal what sort of repairs they’d decided to skip out on. 

The kaiju met them with a lopsided lunge, and they slammed into it, chest to chest. A new set of errors flashed all around Baze and Chirrut for that while they dipped low and smashed the helm up the monster head trying to chase them with a bite. That opened up the underside of its jaw to them, wide enough for Chirrut to grab at it with a three-fingered grip. The kaiju forced out a cry of sorts, the skin of its neck tearing open. 

That was what Baze aimed for, grabbing at the gills with their left before they closed up. “Hold on, Chirrut!!” He would leave the man to carry the entire load—neural, physical—for a hot second while he jumped at the dashboard, flicking off switches and ripping off cables. 

“ _Guardians, what the hell?!_ ” Kay demanded. 

“Just putting my training to use for once,” Baze snarled, yanking on other wires to connect them to ports out of their league before he flipped the switches back on, a series of new lights illuminating the dark Conn-Pod. 

“ _Safety Check Override,_ ” the OS warned them, the display burning red. “ _Single-shot cannon online._ ”

“Yes!!” Baze roared. 

“Hurry!!” Chirrut yelled, bowed by the strain. 

Baze shot off a quick prayer to thank the existence of conscientious engineers and their manual overrides before he fitted himself back in the Drift and pulled the trigger. The gills lit up and blew in a shot of plasma. 

Baze couldn’t remember a feeling more rewarding than that, of landing energy bolts, one after the other, in quick hot bursts. The gills were practically torn to shreds by the time he and Chirrut had regained their space, gushing blue down all the other lacerations that decorated it like an armor. The kaiju retaliated with a screech and a fist flying downwards. 

Chirrut swung up their arm up and caught the attack by the forearm before it could land a heavier blow at their right ear, which had cracked under its knuckles. He slid their arm down and shot up to the offending limb with a straight punch that blew it off them. Cassian let out a yell in the radio. 

They flung themselves sideways just as the incendiaries fell from the skies and landed like a net all over the exposed kaiju. In a heartbeat, it burst out in a veil of flames, its roar threatening to tear through the atmosphere itself. Baze and Chirrut slammed their hands to their ears, struggling to get up. 

There were several groans that rolled out of the radio as the screaming faded, starting again but dying just as soon. Faith dragged herself back between the kaiju and Rebel Hope, hand cannon glowing blue as it locked into the creature behind a screen of white smoke.

No one was surprised to see it come through, thrashing at them, this time more blue and blood than skin. They set their cannon alight, firing shot after shot, aiming for the base of its throat. 

They would never have guessed that the kaiju could still be capable of leaping up to the air, blocking out what little of the sun they could already see. They didn’t know it could leap at all! They traded the gunfire in favor of catching the monster, arms held high, and it landed on them like a plane crash, slamming onto their legs, grabbing hold of their shoulders, overwhelming them. Baze briefly saw that their power was down to its last 50-percent. 

That was before the kaiju smashed down on his shoulder, killing any sensation they might have left down their cannon arm. Baze and Chirrut howled. Flashes of Ruby’s Conn-Pod, Tokyo’s LOCCENT lit up the Drift. Kay was shouting both in and out of it. 

They waited until the kaiju had raised both its fists to bash their helm in before they pushed their weight down and up their legs and with a single roar, flung the beast back and away from them, to their side. That alone had shaved off 20% of their main energy core. They were leaking—there was no other way this was possible. 

“Faith Guardian down to 28-percent!” Chirrut informed the LOCCENT, turning to prepare for the kaiju’s return from the sea. “If this keeps up, we might not make it.”

“ _Abort the mission!_ ” Kay screamed. “ _Jumphawks are standing by to evacuate you._ ”

“We just need an opportunity!” Baze protested. 

“ _You won’t have one!!_ ”

Kay was right—they didn’t. The kaiju was back with another raging lunge. Baze thought about where they might have the best chance of crippling it as they aimed their cannons at its charging form again when it faltered with the weight of something bowing them in from the back. When it screamed, they thought there was something different about it, something that reminded them of a young bird wailing for its mother. 

Rebel Hope appeared over its ruined shoulder, one arm lashed around its neck, the other raised high overhead, jagged staff end pointing down. 

They plunged it, deep within the kaiju’s chest. The sound that came through the monster was uncanny, rippling out to its shoulders, giving it the power to smash its elbow up the side of the sneaky jaeger and swing her off, throwing her across a great distance down the ocean. 

Baze could only watch her spin, flailing, Jyn’s name pouring out of his open mouth. Their hearts rammed inside their bones as they raced to it, trying to outrun it, maybe to catch it, but there was only so much the battered pistons in their legs and their depleted core could do anymore. 

Rebel Hope landed like a meteor, with a great splash. For a second, they heard nothing, and saw nothing of the jaeger. 

Their searchlights were the first to come out from under, sparkling quite like their namesake: hope. The rest of the black titan followed soon after, but Baze knew it was taking too much out of her just to get up. The elegant beast had come askew around her shoulders, and there was a deep gash that ran down along one side of her helm. With enough pressure, it might finally crack the whole thing open like a nut. Every other damage paled in comparison to those two, but that was not a saving grace. The Mark III was not going to make it. 

On her knees, Rebel Hope struggled to get back on her feet, to no success. Jyn growled out angrily, “ _Come on!!_ ”

“ _Power’s down to 10,_ ” Cassian sighed, heavy breaths audible through the radio. “ _Jyn…Jyn!_ ”

“ _No!!_ ” she snarled. But Jyn knew. 

Behind them, the kaiju was swaying on its own feet, still leaking from the staff pierced through its chest—not quite where it mattered, assuming it had a humanoid anatomy inside its monstrosity, but it was more than enough to help them finish the job. Finally, the end was in sight. 

“Jyn?” Chirrut beckoned to her, speaking kindly, watching their jaeger fight on. “Jyn…it’s okay. You can go now. We can take it from here.”

“ _It’s not!_ ” Jyn snapped, gasping. “ _I won’t go. You don’t have to do this on your own. We can still finish the fight! Cassian, please!!_ ”

“At 10%, the jaeger’s power will be reserved for life preservation,” Baze added, throwing in his own voice of reason. “Jyn, Cassian, you know what you have to do. It’s for the best.”

But Jyn persisted, sobbing, until the word became nothing more than a chant, a futile fight. “ _No! No, no, no, no…!_ ” Chirrut was smiling gently at her song, nodding with his eyes closed, when Baze turned to look at him. Soft words, in a language neither understood, answered her in its own calming rhythm. Spanish, Baze realized. Cassian was speaking to Jyn in hush, quiet notes. 

“But if they die…” Jyn protested, but by then her fire had gone out under her tears. Baze was suddenly reminded of how old she was, his little sister. “Cassian, they have to come back with us.” But the fact was that they couldn’t—not just yet. Despite himself, Baze felt a smile coming up on his face. Strangely, he felt light, and at peace with himself and the world. It was something that came from knowing how it would end, he supposed. At least they would die together—just as he’d always wanted. 

“If we die,” Chirrut spoke again, pacing his words carefully before Jyn missed any of them, “then you have to tell the world what happened here. About our sacrifice—yours and mine. About how we stood for humanity even though we stood to lose much more because of it. Don’t go digging our graves yet, though!” It was Chirrut’s attempt for a joke. “We might make it back home. Just have faith, Jyn Erso. All will be well in the end.”

_Just have faith._ Baze couldn’t remember what the day was like when he’d last heard those words, but he was glad he could hear them again before he lost his chances permanently. 

Ultimately, it was Cassian and Chirrut’s joint efforts that had finally convinced a heartbroken Jyn that there was nothing left for her to do out there in the ocean. Cassian disengaged after her, but not without issuing one last request. “ _Make ten men feel like a hundred,_ ” he said, with a voice that struggled under the weight of his own heavy heart. 

“Roger that,” Baze said. They had to say something, after all. “Kay, you’re getting all this?” he asked, glancing at Chirrut who looked out through the window, to where the weakened jaeger knelt, surrounded by the sea. 

“ _Yeah!_ ” Kay said with a suddenness that betrayed his own emotions. “ _Yeah, I copy,_ ” he sniffled, “ _Bodhi will handle Rebel’s evacuation. There will be a jumphawk waiting on you, too. You’ll be expected back here for a debrief. Is that understood?_ ”

“Copy that, LOCCENT,” Baze said. Finally, he closed the line, eyes set still on Chirrut’s serene form, that ghost of a smile on his face. The last chance he would have to see it. The last thing he would see, he thought, but he was satisfied by it. The rest that he wanted still, Baze knew he could just imagine them as if they were real—Chirrut growing old beside him, in a world undarkened by kaiju, with a child in his arms, or maybe two because why the hell not? 

Chirrut laughed suddenly, sharing the vision on his head, and nodded, smiling brightly, as if he was saying, _Okay._ Turning those visions to facts, even though they may never happen anymore but no one could tell them otherwise. _Just have faith,_ he heard the words in his head again, and in his heart. 

From across the ocean, two bullets shot through Rebel Hope’s ruined Conn-Pod, arching low in mid-air to land softly in the water. “ _I see them!_ ” they heard Bodhi call through the radio, and Baze breathed. Jyn and Cassian had survived, and, perhaps, their legacy, too. Now it was time to make sure it stayed that way. 

“ _Reserve energy core online,_ ” acknowledged the OS as soon as Chirrut had activated their backup while Baze worked to get their dislocated left arm back in some sort of working order. They didn’t need it to function completely anymore, they just needed it to shoot. “ _Total power capacity: 59-percent._ ”

“Not even a full 60,” Baze snarled, going through their controls. “Routing all power to motor movements and cannons.” He turned to Chirrut looking back to him. He was going to miss those eyes of his. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“It’s not as funny when it comes from you,” Chirrut said. Baze laughed anyway, throwing his head back. Chirrut grinned. “Well, let’s do it, then!”

They shifted, slightly, to orient themselves exactly to Rebel Hope’s position—and that alone had shaved off another percent off their power. Every step that came after became more difficult than the last, as if they were moving the fighting machine by the sheer will of their own legs, made from flesh and bones. 

Baze was keenly aware of how much energy they had used just for that trip alone, how much oxygen they had consumed. Chirrut’s own brows were tight with the strain when they carried their right hand to take the last staff in Rebel Hope’s grasp. They pushed down, grunting in a chorus. To their relief, they could still manage to break the staff. 

“ _Power level is at 52-percent._ ”

They started to turn, slowly. 

And then it landed on them, full of mass and endless rage with a scream that would haunt them forever in their dreams. Baze and Chirrut cried as they crashed on their knee, arms stretching out for balance while the Conn-Pod bled again with all the damage the kaiju was causing them. A flare of hate surged up to Baze’s chest. It was their fuel to knock the monster back in the water, and to move around on their half-shattered legs as they raised their stolen staff and slammed it as hard as they could on the kaiju’s shoulder. That was its payment for daring them. 

Their movements were sluggish, but they kept it constant. On Chirrut’s lead, they pulled the staff back and directed the hard tip of it straight into the monster’s shoulder, where the bones might be connected, drawing it back as quickly as they could but not before the kaiju could catch it between its hands. In the end, it was faster than they were. 

But it had another staff in its chest, and they took it, blue blood spurting in its wake as they struck the staff upwards the kaiju’s chin, forcing its head back. “Follow me!” Chirrut cried. With their left, they grabbed onto its exposed throat and lit it up with a single short burst. 

Baze roared at the heat and the recoil surging up their arm. The entire arm was now so damaged, they risked hurting themselves with it. Their power was down to 43%, the OS had said, and he knew it was only bound to get worse when they grabbed onto the kaiju’s sides and hauled it off its feet, throwing it to the back of the crouching jaeger. 

With the energy core flashing red in the HUD, they dragged themselves to the monster, staff raised, the same pointed end aimed downward. It was a clean strike until the kaiju had shot out with a wild swing that landed at the base of the helm, throwing them back in their harness. Everything was a mess now;Baze could barely recognize the Conn-Pod anymore amidst the sirens and the pulsing light, and he could no longer see through his helmet clearly. Everything was chaotic. 

Everything about them was reduced to nothing more than instincts—the downward strike of the staff pinning the kaiju to the jaeger, the backwards stumble to safety, their left arm coming up and blasting at the monster, until their arm had finally given up on them and burst into flames. 

But by then, everything was already on fire—the roar of the kaiju, Rebel Hope herself, the air that flung them off their feet, drove a blade in through their guts that seared. 

The last thing Baze remembered was a burnt mass of something hurtling towards them. And then everything was black.

⚠

Jyn felt her knees give with the Conn-Pod, bursting wide open in an explosion. That had been Faith Guardian’s last lifeline and until then, Jyn had dared to hope that all was not as dire as it looked. Even when Rebel Hope’s armor had struck her in the middle, practically cleaving her in half. Even when the kaiju smashed the helm in or when Jyn knew that they were shooting too close, and that this was exactly what would happen, she still hung onto the hope that this was not how it would end. But now there was nothing she could do but to watch the once-glorious Mark IV tip backwards, spilling in pieces, roaring, consumed in flames…

This was not what she had hoped for. This was not what they had chosen to stay back for, refusing to get on the jumphawk without Baze and Chirrut. It was like K-Day all over again—ten years had gone and she was no better from the child that was running towards BART in the arms of her mother, running from the kaiju that had attacked San Francisco. Galen had stayed behind to help their colleagues in the science symposium escape but as soon as her mother Lyra had left her in the care of a stranger with her favorite crystal necklace, she had gone back out to look for her father. 

She never came back after, no matter that Jyn hoped they could all go back home to England that night as if nothing had happened. Galen was the only one who returned for her, picking her up and embracing her as he promised her over and over again, “She will always be with us. My Stardust. Remember, your mother loves you very much. She will always be with you, Stardust.”

Utterly helpless, then and now, even though she’d sworn she would never be when she got on a jaeger. She wanted to cry but still, she refused to give in. She never did know how to lose gracefully. It had always been something she and Cassian had in common. Even now, she could tell that the man held on to a stubborn hope that their friends had somehow survived the battle. He looked intensely out to the ocean, their rescue boat swaying slightly, Bodhi’s chopper’s blades beating patiently overhead. It was the same kind of hope he had nursed once, waiting for his mother to return home from Cabo San Lucas two attacks after San Francisco. It had been the one thing that kept him on his feet when the military held a funeral in honor of the brave soldiers who died for their nation and the world. 

It was the one thing that kept him going now, and Jyn reached out to it through their phantom bridge, wanting the same and giving the same. Hope, faith, stubbornness, whatever it was called. It was getting harder and harder to hold her tears back but she’d always been a fighter, so she fought on. She watched the sea with her co-pilot, for any escape pods, any trails, _anything_ , prayed the same prayer he had once said for his mother. 

She reached up to her neck, where the crystal necklace would have been if it wasn’t packed away with her things, closing her eyes and whispering quietly, _Please_. 

Her armor’s radio crackled to life suddenly, Bodhi spilling out of it, screaming, “ _—there!! It’s them, it’s them, I see them!_ ”

Jyn had missed it all. She looked up, gasping, fighting her heart for breath. Cassian was gone in a loud splash and she followed his path to the shape bobbing aimlessly in the water and there they were, _it’s them!!_ Chirrut, casting his eyes about, one arm flailing uselessly, the other wrapped around a dark bulk that’s— _Oh God, it’s Baze,_ she gasped. Cassian was coming for them, if they could just stop moving! 

But Chirrut was blind. 

Jyn was up on her feet again, almost falling back to the unsteady lifeboat, crying, “Chirrut!! _Chi-rruuut!!_ ” She waved her arms high, as if Chirrut could see her but he had already turned wildly to her direction. 

Finally, Cassian caught up with him, both of them grasping each other by the arms and shoulders. “Hold onto Baze,” she heard her co-pilot say. “I’ll pull you. Okay?” Chirrut understood, and soon they were swimming back, an unconscious Baze bringing up the rear, Cassian kicking carefully but steadily. 

Jyn reached down to Baze’s mass, Chirrut giving him to her so she and Cassian could haul him up to the boat. Cassian was on him as soon as he was secured, leaving Jyn to drag Chirrut in with them, pushing the boat’s limit, but after that there was nothing she could do again. 

“Is he breathing?” she gasped, but couldn’t understand Cassian’s response who only shook his head impatiently when Baze refused to wake up, no matter how hard he was pushing his sternum. So instead, Jyn looked up to Chirrut staring out to the water, pale and silent, lips barely moving, and when _he_ didn’t respond, Jyn almost gave up. 

The tears came back, but for Baze’s sake, she kept them at bay. She would not give up on him this time, not while Cassian was still fighting for him, snarling, “Come on, Baze, come on!!” Pressing harder with his hands. She choked back her fear, keeping her eyes on Baze’s face. In the tensed emptiness of the Pacific Ocean, she heard nothing but her own prayer, _Please, Baze, please, Baze, please, Baze…_ until the words seemed to have blended with each other and she couldn’t tell if she was calling Baze’s name anymore or begging him _please_. But she couldn’t stop, not even to listen to the quiet chant next to her, whispering softly, almost begging him, “Don’t go. Don’t go. I’m here. Don’t go…” At the corner of her eyes, she saw Chirrut’s hand move, seeking for his co-pilot’s. 

And perhaps, it was that that had done it. Baze jumped at them suddenly like a fish, gasping and coughing, turning sideways to throw up the water. Jyn finally lost control and started to sob, covering her eyes as a last ditch attempt. 

Cassian sat back and sighed heavily, pulling his wet locks off his face. “You are one stubborn son of a bitch, do you know that?” he breathed. 

Baze groaned, rolling back to his supine form. “If that’s a first aid question, the answer is I didn’t.” Chirrut laughed suddenly. Eyes damp with unspent relief, Jyn watched the man turn to his co-pilot grinning at the water, their fingers tightening around each other. 

“I want girls,” Baze said suddenly. “Two girls. I’ve always wanted to have girls.”

“You come back to life, and suddenly you’re telling me you like _girls_ now?” Nothing in the world would have killed Chirrut’s smile at that moment, as brilliant as the sun when Baze hit him with a sloppy fist. 

“It’s not the end of the world, all right,” Baze mumbled. Finally, he turned towards Jyn, still sniffing back her emotions, trying to restrain them behind a shaky smile. “I’m sorry, little sister,” he sighed. Jyn shook her head. It wasn’t his fault. 

“Bodhi,” Cassian said, speaking to the mic in his armor, “get us outta here.”

“ _Aye, aye, Cap’n!_ ” Bodhi chirped. 

Everything was okay now.


	11. Chapter 11

“Well, this is me,” she said as the doors parted open to a wide hallway, mostly gray from the walls to the concrete floor, the ceiling lined with stark white light beams which did nothing to make the appearance a bit less depressing. But that was Shatterdomes for you. She was a former colleague back in the Tokyo days, an engineer who had also once been Ruby Force’s team before the jaeger was destroyed. Baze had met her shortly after his interview with the local J-Tech Chief while they were waiting for the same lift. 

By the time they had reached her destination, they had already made a hundred and one promises to meet up and catch up—all four of them, her, her sister, Baze and Chirrut. “I’ll see you around, Kaya,” he called after her, waving until the doors shut. 

It opened up to another corridor, this time with walls of steel, lined by pipes bigger than an arm. With the overhead light, their colors became a mixture of bronze and polished rust although the general mood was still somewhat dark. 

And quiet; Baze was not a man known for his stealth but every step he made landed with an explosive echo, no matter how much he tried to pull them back in, feeling self-conscious at the noise he was making. He wanted to groan but he knew that would only transform to a full-blown roar with these acoustics. At this rate, Chirrut would be able to tell his arrival all the way from the Miracle Mile. 

He met him at the last corner before the Kwoon Training Room, right where he’d left him before he went down for his meeting. He stood comfortably against the wall, arms folded, his trustee hanbo stick right next to his hip. He’d been looking off to a distance, perhaps listening to some hidden beat, until Baze cleared his throat, and he turned to face him with a knowing grin. 

“I bet you could,” Baze chuckled, shaking his head. There was no hiding his entrance from this man who used to be his co-pilot. “Guess who I met downstairs.”

“I met Killi Gimm, by the way,” Chirrut shared. “We’re setting a date for all four of us.”

“Oh that’s convenient,” Baze snorted, and Chirrut laughed. 

“The great thing about neural hangovers is that they’re forever,” Chirrut said, beaming, “even though jaegers are not.”

He may no longer be able to surprise the man because of the history they shared, but Baze felt the same. He smirked slightly, stepping to the wall to rest his weight, hands in his pockets. With jaeger productions being frozen indefinitely, and them having lost their own out in the ocean, Baze and Chirrut could no longer pursue a career as rangers and co-pilots. It was the same with Cassian and Jyn, who he knew were scheduled for an exam with the Strike Troopers today, with Mothma’s recommendation. Kay himself would no longer work as a mission controller, although he would still operate within the LOCCENT. As for Bodhi, he was out there again, up in the sky, the only one among them doing the work he had signed up for. 

“So?” Chirrut asked, standing straighter, taking his hanbo stick to rest his hands on. He raised his chin slightly, smiling still. “What happened then?”

Baze shifted on his feet, but said nothing. If it was true that they truly were connected forever, then Chirrut ought to read his mind. 

Chirrut nodded. “You did not get the Mark III.”

“She already has the restoration team to back her up,” Baze said, shrugging. “I did get something just as exciting.”

Chirrut’s blind eyes lit up instantly. “You got the Mark I!”

“Team Mark II forever,” Baze said, smirking. “Not that there are still any Mark IIs left but a Mark I’s good enough.”

“We’re finally figuring out our lives together,” Chirrut said, grinning. “You are back as an engineer. And I?” He tipped his chin up. “Make great dimsum.”

“That again?” Baze chuckled, moving towards him. “Who says you do?”

“You would once you’ve tasted them!” Chirrut laughed, fitting himself between Baze’s arms, wrapping his own around him. “Our daughters would,” he added. 

It made him smile, just thinking of their future together. It may no longer be as exciting as what they used to have, but it brought their dreams closer, no matter that the kaiju were still a fact of life. If they could just stay together, then all would be well. “If that’s what you say,” Baze mumbled, and received a swat of a hand for his lackluster response. He laughed. 

“Faithless,” Chirrut accused him. “You’ll have no choice. You signed up to a life with me!”

Just one of the reasons Baze was glad for his life for. “I guess I did,” he said, shrugging again. “Well, I don’t know. I guess it’s not so bad.” For his impudence, Chirrut graced him with another smack. Giddy as a boy with the rest of his life waiting for him, Baze laughed again.


End file.
